IT Essentials: Big Tech wins again – but at what cost?

Google gets to keep its monopoly on search – for now

Big Tech could have collectively stood up to Trump but instead each company has sought carve outs and protection abroad. It might look like a good idea now, but it won’t work for long.

Last week, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google does unfairly monopolise online search and advertising markets, but that this monopoly can effectively continue. Google doesn’t have to spin off Chrome and it can continue paying Apple to be the default search in Safari. The judge did tell Google it had to share some of its search data with competitors, but Google is appealing that bit.

On Friday the EU Commission slapped Google with a issued a €2.95 billion fine after having reportedly delayed its plan to announce a sanction at the start of the week due to fears of incurring President Trump’s wrath. Trump duly delivered with the threat of a tariff investigation later that day.

At first glance, this all looks like a huge vindication of Big Tech going all in on Team Trump (those front row seats at the inauguration did not come cheap) and of Trump’s strategy of using the threat of tariffs to bully other countries into submission. Since last year, we’ve all become used to the emetic spectacle of heads of state and the heads of companies with state sized revenues bowing and scraping at the court of King Donald.

(The Trump worship may have reached its apogee last month when Tim Cook bought Apple a tariff carve out by offering up a gold and glass trophy and, presumably, the last remaining shreds of his dignity. I say ‘may’ have reached its apogee because in Trump’s America all bets are off. I wouldn’t rule out Zuck pitching up at the Oval Office with a giant golden rendering of the President.)

Anyway, money well spent right? Well, maybe. Trump has been more consistent in defending Big Tech from any legislative attempts from the EU and the UK to make it accountable for any of the harms perpetuated from its platforms than he has on just about any other subject. He posted last week that American tech companies are “neither the ‘piggy bank’ nor the ‘doormat’ of the world any longer.” I mean won’t someone think of Jeff Bezos?

But the doormat analogy was a telling one. Whilst the Trump administration is implacably opposed to any regulation of US companies outside of the US, it's still pursuing antitrust action against most of the same companies within its own borders. The Department of Justice is still engaged in antitrust lawsuits against Apple (perhaps a bigger trinket for Sir?) Meta, Google and Amazon.

MAGA distrusts Big Tech and its algorithms and other prominent voices in the administration have called for Google to be broken up. At home, as opposed to abroad, the Trump administration is all about deregulation, supposedly to drive innovation.

But by shielding Big Tech from the consequences of its actions outside of the US, Trump has tightened his control of it. For further proof, see the fact that that the usual suspects gathered at the White House last Thursday to listen to Melania Trump talking about “first generation humanoids”. These companies won’t be the ‘doormat of the world.’ They’ll be the doormat in the Oval Office.

Gilt edged, naturally.