Violating the Sherman Act: Google's illegal monopoly

Broadly speaking, the Google decision can be said to nest in a range of recent efforts and undertakings by government regulators to conserve competition in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital markets, a point made by the July 23, 2024 "Joint Statement on Competition in Generative AI Foundation Models and AI Products" from the US Department of Justice, the US Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, and the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority.

The regulators are mindful of potential attempts by firms "to restrict key inputs for the development of AI technologies," entrench or extend existing market power in digital markets "in adjacent AI markets or across ecosystems, taking advantage of feedback and network effects to increase barriers to entry and harm competition," create instances of monopsony power and develop and wield AI "in ways that harm consumers, entrepreneurs, or other market participants."

Such talk is hardly novel. It peppers and haunts the incipient stages of the web's existence: misty visions of the informed cybersphere; communities of engaged digital citizens rowdily if respectfully engaged in civil discourse. All of this done in defiance of policing measures and the suspicious eye of the authoritarian State. Eventually, techno utopianism is as faulty as any other variant of the unrealised idyll. The honey, milk and fruit always seem better on that side of the river, till the journey is made.