The DOJ’s antitrust case against Google is ambitious but risky
CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai in Warsaw, Poland on March 29, 2022.
Mateusz Wlodarczyk | Nurphoto | Getty Images
The Department of Justice’s latest challenge to Google’s tech empire is an ambitious swing at the company with the potential to rearrange the digital advertising market. But alongside the possibility of great reward comes significant risk in seeking to push the boundaries of antitrust law.
“DOJ is going big or going home here,” said Daniel Francis, who teaches antitrust at NYU School of Law and previously worked as deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, where he worked on the agency’s monopoly case against Facebook.
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The DOJ’s antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter has indicated he’s comfortable with taking risks, often saying in public remarks that it’s important to bring cases that seek to challenge current conventions in antitrust law. He said he prefers more permanent remedies like breakups compared to promises to change behavior. That sentiment comes through in the DOJ’s request in its latest lawsuit for the court to force Google to spin off parts of its ad business.
Antitrust experts say the Justice Department paints a compelling story about the ways Google allegedly used acquisitions and exclusionary strategies to fend off rivals and maintain monopoly power in the digital advertising space. It’s one that, if the government gets its way, would break apart a business that’s generated more than $50 billion in revenue for Google in the last quarter, potentially opening up an entire market in which Google is currently one of the most important players.
But, they warn, the government will face significant challenges in proving its case in a court system that progressive antitrust enforcers and many lawmakers believe has taken on a myopic view of the scope of antitrust law, especially when it comes to digital markets.
“If they prove the violations they allege, they’re going to get a remedy that’s going to shake up the market,” said Doug Melamed, a scholar-in-residence at Stanford Law School who served at the Antitrust Division, including as acting assistant attorney general, from 1996-2001 during the landmark case against Microsoft. “But it’s not obvious they’re going to win this case.”
Challenges and strengths
Experts interviewed for this article said the DOJ will face the challenge of charting relatively underexplored areas of antitrust law in proving to the court that Google’s conduct violated the law and harmed competition without benefitting consumers. Though that’s a tall order, it could come with a huge upside if the agency succeeds, possibly expanding the scope of antitrust law for digital monopoly cases to come.
“All antitrust cases are an uphill battle for plaintiffs, thanks to 40 years of case law,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt Law School. “This one’s no exception.”
But, Allensworth added, the government’s challenges may be different than those in many other antitrust cases.
“Usually the difficulty, especially in cases involving platforms, is market definition,” she said. In this case, the government argued the relevant market is publisher ad servers, ad exchanges, and advertiser ad networks — the three sides of the advertising stack Google has its hand in, which the DOJ said it’s leveraged to box out rivals. “And here, I think that that is relatively straightforward for the DOJ.”
“One way to look at the latest complaint is that it is the newest and most complete draft of a critique that antitrust agencies in the U.S. and abroad have been building against Google for over a decade,” William Kovacic, who served on the Federal Trade Commission from 2006 to 2011 and is now a professor at George Washington Law, said in an email.
Google, for its part, has said the latest DOJ lawsuit “tries to rewrite history at the expense of publishers, advertisers and internet users.” It claims the government is trying to “pick winners and losers” and that its products have expanded options for publishers and advertisers.
Compared to the DOJ’s earlier lawsuit, which argued Google maintained its monopoly over search services through exclusionary contracts with phone manufacturers, this one advances more nontraditional theories of harm, according to Francis, the NYU Law professor and former FTC official. That also makes it more likely that Google will move to dismiss the case to at least narrow the claims it may have to fight later on — a move it did not take in the earlier suit, he added.
“This case breaks much more new ground and it articulates theories, or it seems to articulate theories, that are right out on the border of what existing antitrust prohibits,” Francis said. “And we’re going to find out, when all is said and done, where the boundaries of digital monopolization really lie.”
High risk, high reward?
CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai in Warsaw, Poland on March 29, 2022.
Mateusz Wlodarczyk | Nurphoto | Getty Images
DOJ took a gamble with this case. But if it wins, the rewards could match the risk.
“In terms of the potential impact of the remedy, this could be a bigger case than Microsoft,” said Melamed.
Still, Francis cautioned, a court could order a less disruptive remedy, like paying damages if it finds the government was harmed as an advertising purchaser, or simply requiring Google to stop the allegedly illegal conduct, even if it rules in the DOJ’s favor.
Like all antitrust cases, this one is unlikely to be concluded anytime soon. Still, a key decision by the Justice Department could make it speedier than otherwise expected. The agency filed the case in the Eastern District of Virginia, which has gained a reputation as the “rocket docket” for its relatively efficient pace in moving cases along.
“What that signals to me is that, given the timeframe for antitrust litigation is notoriously slow, DOJ is doing everything that they can in their choice of venue to ensure that this litigation moves forward before technological and commercial changes make it obsolete,” Francis said.
He added that the judge who has been assigned the trial, Clinton appointee Leonie Brinkema, is regarded as smart and fair and has handled antitrust cases before, including one Francis litigated years ago.
“I could imagine that both sides will feel pretty good about having drawn Judge Brinkema as a fair, efficient and sophisticated judge who will move the case along in an expeditious way,” Francis said.
Still, there are hardly any judges who have experience with a case like this one, simply because there haven’t been that many digital monopolization cases decided in court.
“So any judge who would be hearing this case is going to be confronting frontier issues of antitrust theory and principle,” Francis said.
Immediate impact
Outside of the courts, the case could have a more immediate impact in other ways.
“From the point of view of strategy, the case adds a major complication to Google’s defense by increasing the multiplicity and seriousness of public agency antitrust enforcement challenges,” said Kovacic, the former FTC commissioner. “The swarming of enforcement at home and abroad is forcing the company to defend itself in multiple fora in the US and in jurisdictions such as the EU and India.”
Regardless of outcomes, Kovacic said the sheer volume of lawsuits and regulation can create a distraction for top management and will likely lead Google to more carefully consider its actions.
“That can be a serious drag on company performance,” Kovacic wrote.
The suit could also lend credence to lawmakers’ efforts to legislate around digital ad markets. One proposal, the Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act, would prohibit large companies like Google from owning more than one part of the digital advertising system, so it couldn’t own tools on both the buy and sell side as it currently does.
Importantly, the bill is sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust. Lee has remained skeptical of some other digital market antitrust reforms, but his leadership on this bill suggests there may be a broader group of Republicans willing to support this kind of measure.
“An antitrust lawsuit is good, but will take a long time and apply to only one company,” Lee tweeted following the DOJ’s announcement, saying he would soon reintroduce the measure. “We need to make sure competition works for everyone, and soon.”
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., who has backed the House version of the bill, called the digital ad legislation “The most important bill we can move forward” in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
“This is clearly the blockbuster case so far from the DOJ antitrust division,” Francis said. “And I think it represents a flagship effort to establish new law on the borders of monopolization doctrine. And at the end of it — win, lose or draw — it’s really going to contribute to our understanding of what the Sherman Act actually prohibits in tech markets.”
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Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce Inc., speaks during the 2025 Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are harnessing it to employ fewer people. Ford CEO Jim Farley warned that it will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers.” Salesforce‘s Marc Benioff claimed it’s already doing up to 50% of the company’s workload. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told The Wall Street Journal that it “is going to change literally every job.”
The “it” that’s on corporate America’s lips is artificial intelligence.
Less than three years into the generative AI boom, executives across every major industry are loudly telling employees and shareholders that, due to the technological revolution underway, the size and shape of their workforce is about to dramatically change, if it hasn’t already.
What started with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a novel new way for consumers to use chatbots has rapidly made its way into the enterprise, with companies employing customized AI agents to automate functions in customer support, marketing, coding, content creation and elsewhere.
Recent estimates from Goldman Sachs suggest that 6% to 7% of U.S. workers could lose their jobs because of AI adoption. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using ADP employment data, found that entry-level hiring in “AI exposed jobs” has dropped 13% since large language models started proliferating. The report said software development, customer service and clerical work are the types of jobs most vulnerable to AI today.
“We are at the beginning of a multi-decade progress development that will have a major impact on the labor market,” said Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute, a research firm that focuses on changes in the economy and workforce.
Automation, of course, is nothing new. Every era has its printing press, ATM machine, self-checkout machine or online booking agency that’s replaced human labor with some form of technology. In the process, new jobs emerge and economies adapt and evolve.
A report from the World Economic Forum earlier this year estimated that the onslaught of AI, robotics and automation could displace 92 million jobs by 2030, while adding 170 million new roles. AI development, research, safety and implementation are all areas of growth, along with robotics.
Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford research group, said that, in addition to new types of roles, physical jobs such as health aids and construction workers are so far shielded from AI disruption.
“There’s going to be more turbulence in both directions in the coming months and years,” Brynjolfsson said in an interview. “We need to prepare our workforce.”
The high-level data isn’t yet showing massive changes.
The U.S. government is three weeks into a shutdown, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics has gone dark. But alternative reports from organizations like the Chicago Fed have shown an economy that’s plodding along. Employment growth is meek, but the labor market is holding steady.
The unemployment rate held flat at 4.3% in September, according to the Chicago Fed, as did the rate for layoffs and other separations at 2.1%.
A recent study published by the Budget Lab at Yale found no “discernible disruption” caused by ChatGPT. Martha Gimbel, co-founder of the lab, called the upheaval from AI “minimal” and “incredibly concentrated,” although that could shift as technological changes work through the broader economy.
“The rest of the economy often moves more slowly than Silicon Valley,” she said.
The New York Fed found in a survey last month that only 1% of services firms reported laying off workers because of AI in the last six months. The Society for Human Resource Management said its data shows that 6% of U.S. jobs have been automated by 50% or more, a number that rises to 32% for computer and math-related professions.
‘Scrappier teams’
It doesn’t take much prying to get corporate executives to talk about what’s coming.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in June that his company’s corporate workforce will shrink from AI over the next few years, and encouraged employees to learn how to use AI tools to eventually “get more done with scrappier teams.”
The New York Times published an investigative piece on Tuesday, showing that Amazon’s automation team expects that it can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the U.S. by 2027, equaling savings of about 30 cents on every item that Amazon packs and delivers. The report was based on interviews and internal strategy documents, the Times said.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC in August that his data analytics company, which has seen its market cap soar more than elevenfold in the past two years, aims to grow revenue by 10 times and reduce its head count by about 12%. He didn’t provide a timeframe for reaching that goal.
The message is making its way across the tech industry.
Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, said last month that his software company has cut the number of customer support roles from 9,000 to 5,000 “because I need less heads.” Swedish fintech firm Klarna said it has downsized its workforce by 40% as it adopts AI. Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told employees in April that they’ll be expected to prove why they “cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more head count and resources.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, speaks during an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the company at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on April 4, 2025.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Coding assistants have been some of the early winners of the generative AI rush, becoming the first real application type to attract a hefty number of paying users. The Information reported last week that Anysphere, the parent of Cursor, is in talks to raise funds at a $27 billion valuation, as it takes on Microsoft’s GitHub and other startups, including Replit, in an increasingly crowded market.
Software development is just the beginning.
In banking, JPMorgan’s managers have been told to avoid hiring people as the firm deploys AI across its businesses, CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts last week. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said that as his bank incorporates AI, it will be “taking a front-to-back view of how we organize our people, make decisions, and think about productivity and efficiency.”
Then there’s the auto sector.
When Ford CEO Farley told Walter Isaacson in an interview in July that “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind,” he was reflecting a sentiment that’s growing across his industry. According to a survey of 500 U.S. car dealers conducted by marketing solutions firm Phyron, half of respondents said they expect AI to sell vehicles autonomously by 2027.
“That means AI creating the marketing assets, handling listings, answering buyer questions, negotiating deals, arranging finance, and completing the sale — all without human input,” Phyron said in the report on its survey results last month.
The topic will likely get a lot of attention in the next couple weeks as the world’s biggest tech companies issue quarterly results and update investors on their AI deployments. Tesla kicks off tech earnings season on Wednesday, followed next week by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.
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