Earlier this month, a district court in Washington DC handed down a judgment in an antitrust case that has shaken up the tech industry. In a 286-page opinion, Judge Amit Mehta announced his conclusion. “After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
Now I know that for normal, well-adjusted people, antitrust cases are an excellent antidote to insomnia, but stay tuned for a moment because this is a really big deal. Apart from anything else, it shows that an ancient legal warhorse, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, still has teeth. And to see it successfully deployed to bring an overbearing tech company to heel is a delight. After all, it was the statute that in 1911 broke up John D Rockefeller’s Standard Oil as well as American Tobacco, and AT&T in 1982. It was also used to prosecute Microsoft in 1998.
