🏛️ Google's search-monopoly remedy is a broad consent decree, not a breakup

“The big O outcome though is more if you go back to the Ma Bell kind of thing where the company gets broken up. I think that the odds of that are extremely unlikely. I think the big O outcome is probably something that you can pretty safely take off the table. I think it's going to be a little O outcome.”

“And I think that it would be great if the government broke up this company. I mean, it should be at least three or four companies.”

“It has everything to do with Google monopolizing the search business, which is the biggest business on the Internet.”

“I think we should take apart the monopolistic antitrust actions and behaviors that they take and then identify ways to remedy those behaviors versus just saying, anyone or anything that's big should be taken apart”

“Unfortunately, not what Friedberg just said. It'll be the opposite. There'll be some form of forced remedy.”

“This thing should be probably three separate companies like we've talked about in our previous show.”

“Again, I'm not saying that it should happen, but it will happen.”

“So, my view is that Google should be broken up. There's abundant reasons for that. There's at least three monopolies in that company. There's the search business, the advertising business and YouTube. I think they should be busted up. What are the odds that that happens? It's hard to say, but what are the odds that that is pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated? I'd say hi. I'd say Facebook or Metta, less so.”

“So yeah, if a bureaucrat thinks the right thing to do is to divest a random browser to fix Google's monopolistic tendencies, that's not a remedy.”