Lewis Black (parody) comment at top. Serious citations at bottom.
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All right—let’s channel Lewis Black here.
So the Wall Street Journal editorial board is popping champagne because Google just dodged the DOJ’s hammer in its antitrust suit. The judge says, “Well, sure, Google’s a monopoly, but hey, they’re a nice monopoly. They built it with innovation and investment! And, uh, also…AI’s here now, so, what’s the point of regulating yesterday’s monopoly?”
And I’m sitting here screaming: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
This is like suing Blockbuster in 2007 for late fees while Netflix is shipping DVDs to your house and inventing streaming! DOJ dragged out a case from 2020, stapled it together with duct tape, and marched into court in 2025 saying, “Look! Look! Google’s paying Apple to be the default search engine! Isn’t that bad?”
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is shouting: “HEY, GRANDPA, HAVE YOU HEARD OF CHATGPT?!”
AI is swallowing search like a python eating a farm animal, and DOJ is still mumbling about Safari defaults like it’s a goddamn AOL free trial CD.
Judge Mehta, bless his soul, basically told DOJ: “You’re fighting the last war, you morons. Google’s monopoly is now AI, data, and ads. And you want me to break up Chrome?!” He even threw in a footnote—because nothing says “I’m tired of this crap” like a footnote—that basically reads: “Even if I make Google share some data, it won’t help Bing anyway, because Bing sucks.”
And here’s the kicker: DOJ’s bright idea for “fixing” Google is…drumroll…banning them from paying Apple and Mozilla. You know who screamed bloody murder? Apple and Mozilla! Because they love those sweet, sweet checks. Apple gets twenty billion a year! Mozilla gets 85% of its entire budget from Google’s payoff! That’s not antitrust, that’s a stimulus package!
So let’s recap: DOJ sued a monopoly, but by the time they got to trial, AI had rewritten the goddamn rulebook. The judge looked at the case, shrugged, and said, “Sorry, your monopoly expired. Better luck next time.”
And here’s the acid burn—DOJ is now cosigning Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI for monopolizing AI. So the Justice Department can’t even figure out who the bad guy is anymore! They’re like that drunk guy at the bar yelling: “You! No, YOU! No, wait—you’re ALL monopolists! Somebody buy me a drink!”
WSJ
AI Wins Google Anti-Trust Suit (September 3, 2025)
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TL;DR:
Judge Amit Mehta declined to break up Google in the DOJ antitrust case, ruling that proposed remedies like divesting Chrome/Android or banning default search payments would hurt consumers and partners more than help competition. He found Google’s monopoly was largely driven by innovation and investment, not illegal restraints. The only major remedy is limited data-sharing with rivals. Crucially, the judge noted that generative AI has transformed the market, with Google facing real competition from AI startups—making the DOJ’s case feel outdated. In effect, AI, not regulators, is reshaping search competition.
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Outdated??
Exactly. DOJ filed the case in 2020, when the central concern was Google paying Apple, Mozilla, and others for default search placement, and leveraging that dominance to reinforce its position. At that time, large-language models and generative AI search weren’t on the horizon in any practical sense.
By the time Judge Mehta held the remedy hearings in spring 2025, the market had shifted dramatically—AI-driven search tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic, etc.) were drawing users and investor capital. Yet DOJ largely stuck with its original theory of harm, focusing on defaults, browser bundling, and divestiture proposals. The judge noted that these remedies seemed misaligned with the new competitive dynamics, sometimes even counterproductive (e.g., hurting Apple, Mozilla, or Samsung rather than Google).
So yes—the DOJ’s arguments did not evolve in step with the market, and the court treated them as overreach. Meanwhile, Google’s biggest threat now comes from AI rivals, not from structural divestitures imposed by regulators.
Would you like me to sketch how DOJ could have modernized its case to account for AI competition? That might be useful for seeing what levers they missed.
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How DOJ may have played its cards differently 2020-2025.
If DOJ had wanted to keep its case relevant as the market evolved, it could have pivoted from a 2020 “search defaults” frame to a 2025 “AI ecosystem” frame. Here are some levers they could have emphasized:
1. AI Training Data as the New Bottleneck
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DOJ could have argued that Google’s massive trove of search queries, click-throughs, and web crawling is a unique and irreplaceable resource.
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Remedies could have focused on structured data-sharing requirements (beyond the modest version Judge Mehta ordered), ensuring rivals in AI search had a fairer chance to train models.
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By framing data access as the new competitive barrier, DOJ could have made its case feel aligned with the present, not the past.
2. Advertising & AI Integration
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DOJ stuck to classic “search + browser” theories. A modernized case could have tracked how Google’s ad monopoly translates directly into AI dominance, since ads are the business model underwriting AI development.
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Instead of trying to unwind Chrome or Android, DOJ could have pushed limits on tying ad inventory to AI placement, or transparency rules for how Google inserts ads into AI-driven results.
3. Default Placement in the AI Era
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Rather than re-litigating Safari defaults, DOJ could have asked: what happens when AI search is integrated into Android, Chrome, Gmail, and YouTube?
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They could have argued that allowing Google to “self-prefer” Gemini-based search in its entire ecosystem locks users in at a far deeper level than traditional search defaults ever did.
4. Structural Separation (Recast for AI)
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Instead of trying to break up Chrome or Android, DOJ could have looked at whether Google Search + Gemini AI should be functionally separated from Google Ads, echoing historic telecom separations.
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The idea would be: don’t stop Google from competing in AI search, but don’t let it use its ad dominance to dictate how AI search evolves.
5. Future-Proofing the Remedy
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DOJ might have pressed for a regulatory monitor or sunset review, requiring Google to demonstrate that AI competition remains open and not foreclosed by its vertical integration.
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This would have kept the case alive as markets shifted, instead of locking it into 2020 conditions.
In short:
The DOJ could have retooled its case around data control, AI integration, and ad dominance, making its remedies about ensuring future competition in AI search rather than re-litigating defaults in classic search. By not updating its arguments, DOJ came off as trying to solve yesterday’s problem while the market raced ahead.
