In a Landmark Move, the U.S. Government Files a Lawsuit Against Google

The U.S. government has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google citing monopoly over the search and search history industry.

The Justice Department accused a unit of Alphabet, Google, of using business contracts and agreements to push out any competition that would rise up and threaten their stranglehold on the information industry.

This comes at a very inopportune time as political tensions remain high during this election season. Critics from both political parties are calling foul play on Google and their political advertisement choices.

Greg Bensinger of The New York Times questioned whether or not Google could be held accountable for holding the truth to a standard, asking, “If one of the most powerful tech companies can’t call out the president’s dishonesty, who can?”

Google and Bing represent the two largest search engines in the world, and as such, hold an unprecedented influence over all internet users' direction of thought. Calling it the “gatekeeper of information,” the government is claiming that Google maintains its power by shutting down suggestions for competitors whilst pushing allies higher up on the suggestions page. We all know that there’s no such thing as a true second page on Google.

If this is true, then several theories about online echo chambers are correct. Claims that Google separates and contains certain online presences would hold more weight, since the built-in suggestions bar sends most users wherever they think that they need to go.

Along this line comes many conspiracy theories, as well as the Kool-Aid that comes with them. The ideas that “Google doesn’t directly profit from organic rankings, so their ultimate plan is to de-prioritize those rankings in their search results” and “Google is using its search dominance to skew results to fit its own corporate goals rather than providing the best search results” may hold merit, but it’s a slippery slope down to “Google is evil and wants world domination.”

Google doesn't really help its case in any conspiracy theories though. Google may indeed have world domination in mind. Google was sued for tracking users on private mode against their own privacy policy and has been cashing in on countless COVID-19 conspiracy theories ever since the pandemic went global. Google has been sued countless times over their blatant lies on their “privacy policies,” and despite over 5 billion given in settlements they show no signs of slowing down.

Alexander Nesmith is a Junior

Communication Major from

Calhoun, Georgia