Google Faces a Potential Breakup on Multiple Fronts

There’s been a lot of attention recently on the government’s antitrust case against Meta, in part because Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO, spent three days testifying in court about his company’s alleged anticompetitive tactics. (Klaudia Jaźwińska wrote about the case in this newsletter last week.) That case is just starting to get underway. But another Silicon Valley behemoth is arguably in an even worse position, having lost not one but two landmark antitrust decisions, about two different aspects of its business: Google, which has been found to be guilty of anticompetitive conduct in both its search and online advertising operations. As these cases proceed through the remedy phase, the government is expected to argue that Google should be forced to sell off significant chunks of its business. And those sales—if and when they actually come to pass—could change the way that online publishing works in some fundamental ways.