Good things are happening! Trump goes surprisingly antitrust on Google, the high court lets states fight about the climate, medical research can’t be stopped, and a carbon capture pipeline gets captured.
Trump Wants Google To Break Up, Too
When it comes to antitrust enforcement, there are some signs that President Donald Trump’s administration isn’t entirely abandoning President Joe Biden’s mission. On March 7, the Justice Department reiterated its assertion that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has created a monopoly on search engines that must be broken up by the courts.
The request follows a landmark ruling last year that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search by paying web browsers and smartphone manufacturers to set its search engine as the default. Judge Amit Mehta, who delivered the historic ruling against Google in August, is scheduled to hear arguments on proposed solutions from both the government and Google in April.
Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department and a coalition of states asked Mehta to force Google to sell its popular web browser, Chrome, alongside other remedies such as changes to its investments in artificial intelligence. The department’s lawyers on Friday reiterated the same demand, writing that Google, which holds a 90 percent share in the search engine marketplace, had created an “economic Goliath” that “wreaks havoc over the marketplace.”
