The Economics Of Antitrust Is Google Violating the Consumer Welfare Standard? Daniel Mathew
Abstract On Tuesday, October 20, 2020, the Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google on allegations of using anti-competitive tactics to preserve a monopoly for its flagship search engine and digital advertising business. The antitrust lawsuit represents the latest move in a series of actions stretching out across several months that have undertaken to expose and attenuate the technology behemoth’s monopolistic grip on the consumer search and commercial advertising markets. Drawing on relevant economic principles and the legal and regulatory framework defined by U.S. antitrust law, this article contends that potential net increases in consumer welfare— measured as the sum of the differences between what individual consumers are willing to pay and what they actually pay for goods and services— should be the litmus test for assessing the prudence and efficacy of pursuing antitrust litigation against Google and big technology companies more broadly.
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