The art of the breakup: Trump’s antitrust surge.

Dave Bittner: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Caveat", N2K CyberWire's privacy surveillance law and policy podcast. I'm Dave Bittner, and joining me is my co-host, Ben Yelin from the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security. Hey there, Ben.

Ben Yelin: Hello, Dave.

Dave Bittner: On today's show, Ben and I are once again joined by our N2K CyberWire colleague and author of the "Caveat" Newsletter, Ethan Cook. We're taking a look at antitrust policy in the Trump administration. While this show covers legal topics and Ben is a lawyer, the views expressed do not constitute legal advice. For official legal advice on any of the topics we cover, please contact your attorney. [ Music ] All right, let's jump right in here. And Ethan, welcome. It's great to have you back.

Ethan Cook: It's always great to be on, guys.

Dave Bittner: So you have written up a really interesting paper here on antitrust policy of the Trump administration. And of course, our subscribers to the "Caveat" Newsletter will be able to check out what you've done here. Let's just start off with some high-level stuff. I mean, when we're talking about antitrust and the Trump administration, what's the high-level approach that they seem to be taking here, Ethan?

Ethan Cook: I think the best way I can surmise it is aggressive, specifically against big tech. I would go as far to say that this is probably the most aggressive administration regarding antitrust policy in about two decades. Biden's a close contender, but they certainly are pushing for some pretty aggressive policies.

Dave Bittner: Ben, I'd say this in a way surprises me. I'm thinking back to President Trump's inauguration and who was standing by his side.

Ben Yelin: Yeah, the second row there was Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg. I think this is a really interesting surprise, at least from my perspective. There were a lot of, as Ethan writes about, antitrust cases in progress, initiated by, in many cases, the Biden administration, FTC, which was run by an antitrust hawk, Lina Khan. And there were hints that some of Trump's people were on board this antitrust agenda, including J.D. Vance, the vice president, who said that he admired a lot of Lina Khan's work. But I certainly didn't think that they'd go at it as strongly as they have, largely because Trump seemed to have made peace with big tech and with Silicon Valley prior to the election. And a lot of his new base of support in 2024 that he didn't have in 2016 and 2020 was Silicon Valley types, VCs, people who are in the industry, who are very forward-looking and were frustrated by democratic economic policy, social and cultural policy. And so this became a big part of his coalition. You'd think that President Trump would come in and as a payback to getting the votes of this community, he would be lighter on antitrust matters. And it's just a really interesting surprise that his administration has been so tough, particularly because a lot of the Trump presidency has been undoing the work of the previous administration. So I feel like we could have seen that here and we haven't. They've continued to vigorously argue the case in these two Google cases that we've talked about. Now there's a Meta case that's coming up and they have kept their foot on the gas pedal. So it's definitely something that's noteworthy and surprising.

Dave Bittner: Ethan, what's the why here? I mean, why do we think antitrust has become such a focal point of this administration's tech policy agenda?

Ethan Cook: Yeah, it's an interesting one. It's kind of -- it's a question that I've been grappling with, especially considering how, you know, to Ben's point during the campaign trail, it appeared that Trump was not only willing to take their money, but was willing to give them access and then to turn around and kind of slap in the face and say, yeah, thank you for all your support, I'm now going to break up all your companies, was kind of shocking to me. I think part of it when I try and think back is, you know, to Ben's point, some of these cases were started by the Biden administration, but some of these cases date back to Trump's first administration where at the end in 2020, he was launching some of these cases. And it felt like, you know, there was that rift between him and social media companies, him and big tech companies. So I think some of this is that inherent gap that has been there for years now. And he's just kind of playing that through. And I think part of the other side is, and I didn't write about this, but maybe a little speculation on my behalf, but, you know, Trump is more aligned with more traditional big tech or big media companies. He reinstituted net neutrality or net neutrality died, which net neutrality is something that these big tech companies were pretty much in favor of and companies that provide internet were not in favor of. And the killing of net neutrality was something that I thought was, and Trump's reiterated attempts to kill net neutrality was something that kind of aligned to me saying, okay, maybe he's more in line with these traditional companies that we consider like a Verizon, AT&T, whatever it may be for internet providers than compared to a Google or a Meta.

Ben Yelin: It's an interesting theory, but then like, why is the second row at his inauguration the heads of all these companies?

Ethan Cook: Yeah, I don't know. It's weird to me because it's this dynamic where obviously there was a huge political stunt and got the media talking for days that they were there. But at the same time, there appears to be no love lost between the two of them. I mean, outside of these lawsuits, I mean, you know, Trump and Elon's relationship has pretty much fallen apart. And I mean, I don't think anyone was particularly shocked by that, but, you now, I kind of saw that one coming a little bit. But I think maybe, you know, one thing that he's going to go after these cases, maybe relax on the merger and acquisition front. I don't know. It's kind of a dynamic where I'm kind of -- it's a head scratcher.

Dave Bittner: Could it be as simple as loyalty flows in one direction when it comes to Donald Trump? I mean, he expects these tech companies to bend their knees and make their contributions. But that does not in any way guarantee that he's obligated to anything.

Ethan Cook: I mean, that's been the pattern of his presidencies and really going back to his career in business is that he expects loyalty from others, but like -- and everybody kind of sidles up to him thinking that they can buy his loyalty with their political support or with money. But he does not always fulfill those promises, which is why he's had falling outs with people like Elon Musk. And just going back through his political career and business career, people who've tried to cozy up to him to get what they want frequently don't end up getting what they want, even if they've spent a decade cozying up to him. So you know, I always think of Lindsey Graham, who I think made -- the Senator from South Carolina, who's a big traditional pro-defense Republican was very anti-Trump during the 2016 campaign, kind of famously wrote a tweet saying, if we nominate this guy, we're going to get killed and we deserve to. Of course he won the election. And I think Lindsey Graham made a calculated decision at that point to say, let me get on this guy's good side and maybe I can help shape his foreign policy to be more a traditional Republican interventionist foreign policy. Maybe I can make him more of a defense hawk. And he's kept up the praise and the cozying up to Trump, they're golf buddies. And maybe on some matters he's gotten his way on foreign policy, but on things like Ukraine and Russia and certainly on Iran, he has not. So I think there is that kind of pattern here of people think that he doesn't have fixed political beliefs and they take from that, that he's malleable and that if you flatter him you might get what you want. And I think he loves that people think that because people come to him and they flatter him. But it's just, I think it doesn't always end up accruing to the benefit of the flatterers, if that makes sense.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I think Ethan, you sort of alluded to an interesting point here, which is -- and I guess Ben, chime in on this. I can't help thinking how many things loop back to the 2020 election, right? And so President Trump's animosity towards these big companies, as Ethan alluded to you can trace back to what Trump and his allies consider misinformation, mainly that President Trump lost the 2020 election, right? The refusal to acknowledge that. How much of this keeps looping back to that?

Ethan Cook: Yeah. And I think this is this interesting dynamic where I don't even think it was just the loss. I think it was throughout the four years under Biden, them continuing to go after this misinformation and, you know, follow Biden's statement, even though Biden was actively pursuing these lawsuits, all of them, meanwhile, using as a, you know, convenient, hey, these were already started for me, might as well see it through. And I think to an extent, this feels a little bit like a targeted, you went after me and my claims for four years. You know, thank you for helping me get elected. I am now going to pay it back.

Ben Yelin: What's so funny about that though, is he won concessions from pretty much all of these companies. And I get that we're talking very generally here. I think two of the main cases are against Google and Google is kind of its own case, but sticking to Meta and X/Twitter just for a second. So X/Twitter gets purchased by Elon Musk and becomes much more Trump friendly. And they do away with a lot of the 2020 era policies where people could get banned for misgendering somebody or they throttled the story of the Hunter Biden laptop. Meta at the beginning of this year, very publicly said, we're getting rid of third-party independent fact checking. We're going to move to a model that's more like what X/Twitter has, which is community notes. And Zuckerberg gave this whole speech about -- I guess it wasn't really a speech. It was just a direct to camera video.

Dave Bittner: A pronouncement.

Ben Yelin: Yeah. So I think the cynic in me wants to say they did that so that Trump and his administration would be more friendly to the ambitions of big tech companies. And this just might be another instance of they're not getting back what they thought they were going to get back from this transactional relationship.

Dave Bittner: Well, let's dig into the Google cases, as you do in your writeup here, Ethan. We've got these two cases for Google. There's the search engine monopoly case and the digital advertising case. You want to go through those one at a time?

Ethan Cook: Yeah. So starting with the search engine one, since that was the first one that kind of made some big progress, this was one of the ones I believe that dates back to Trump. And it was ruled on last year in 2024, about midway through that Google was a monopoly. It was the first of these wave that we're starting to see of these big tech companies starting to lose some of these battles or in, you know, belief that they could lose these battles. And I remember at the time there was a huge wave of antitrust lawyers saying that this is a turning point. This is a substantial win. Even if the remediations aren't substantial, the fact that we even had a ruling, we haven't seen this since Microsoft in the early 2000s when they were ruled as a monopoly. So this case result resulted from Google essentially making it so that their search engine, the Chrome browser and Google Chrome was the default option for everyone to use on devices by making exclusive contracts with device makers like Apple, paying them hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that Google was automatically put as the default option. And the I believe judge Mehta who ruled on the case commented that not only was this preventing other search engines from getting in, it was also actively discouraging companies like Apple who they were paying to make search engines when they very much could have, because why would we invest the billions to make a search engine when we're already getting paid millions to just not make one? So that was a huge ruling there. And not only did we get the antitrust ruling on the case, the closing arguments for that case just wrapped up I believe May 30th. So a couple of weeks ago. And while Judge Mehta is not expected to rule on that till August and provide his explanation of what he thinks should be the remediation, and Google, no matter what it will be, will certainly appeal the case. The DOJ has been adamant this entire time under Biden and Trump that a breakup is needed, that there has to be a full divestiture of Chrome as well as potentially licensing search engine software, which again, Google has come back and said, well, not only would divesting from Chrome cripple us, but licensing that search engine software would also cripple us. Either one of them is a problem. And instead, you know, Google is proposing a much laxer, oh, we'll put an oversight board in and we'll end these exclusive contracts as a solution instead. And then flipping over to the other major Google case, this one involves its ad tech company. While they are still ongoing, the remediation phase and trying to figure that out and argue, they were ruled the monopoly earlier this year. And that case was started under Biden in 2023 and specifically targeted Google's ad publishing servers and ad exchange servers. And right now, the Trump administration, just as with the other case, with the search engine case is also actively pursuing a divestiture as well.

Dave Bittner: Ben, what's your thoughts here?

Ben Yelin: The result of both of these cases, depending on what the remedies of the judge's order could be very significant to consumers. I think the most important thing is that consumers might have choices. And it's not just the consumers of these applications, but the ad companies who've been boxed into this Google ad software, they might have options that allow them to display advertising in a way that's cheaper, that's more effective, that serves their interests. And conversely, in the other case, competition among search engines, at least theoretically will foster innovations that makes search engines better if they're competing with one another. Google and other companies will be forced to offer better services. I think a backdrop of this, and I wonder if you guys agree with me on this is like Google is worse than it was five years ago, just generally at being a search engine. I think some of that is it's AI technology has kind of fallen behind the pack among others. The AI feature embedded in the search engine just, at least to me, seems to just not work very well. The user interface seems less clear than it used to. So maybe if they're forced to divest from Chrome, they can refocus their efforts on their core mission, which is dominating the search engine market. But just a thought there, and I'm wondering if you guys think there's something to that.

Dave Bittner: Ethan?

Ethan Cook: Yeah, so you mentioned the hot button word, AI. You know, it actually came up in that search engine case where Mehta, there's some speculation that Mehta is going to be a little bit nicer on his ruling when he releases his opinion in likely August. Because in the closing arguments, he directly references how he thinks there's some validity to the argument that AI is just replacing search engines in general. And I believe he made a quote saying no one wants, you know, 10 blue links on their screen anymore. Everyone wants to just neatly summarize, type a prompt into AI and give it back. And so part of his ruling is -- an interesting speculation is that maybe he is not going to be as harsh because he doesn't think the search engine business is that viable long-term anyway. So why force a breakup? Why create all this volatility when it's going to potentially, you know, kind of fade to the dust anyways?

Dave Bittner: Right. Self-correct.

Ethan Cook: Exactly. I would agree though, Ben, that I, I think Google has rested on its laurels and there's no real reason to dominate the search engine market, you know, try to dominate when you're already dominating it. There was an interesting graph I saw where it ranked Google over the past, you know, X number of years compared to its share in dominance with across the globe. You know, and you go back 10, 15 years and it's a way more even competitive landscape, and you go to now and it's like 98% Google is the favorite search engine. It's not even close.

Ben Yelin: And I think it's been bad for everybody because -- now granted, I want to go back to the late '90s days of Lycos and Alta Vista. I'm aging myself there, Ethan.

Ethan Cook: Yeah, I was going to say that I've never even heard of those.

Ben Yelin: Dave, I saw you laugh at that. You know what I'm talking about?

Dave Bittner: Yeah. I still just want to ask Jeeves.

Ben Yelin: Oh, I love Jeeves. Yeah. Jeeves was incredible. I mean, Jeeves was almost the original AI because you were asking it direct questions.

Ethan Cook: Now I'm going to date myself. Is Jeeves the paperclip?

Ben Yelin: No, that was Clippy.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Clippy.

Ethan Cook: Ah, see, I dated myself.

Ben Yelin: Jeeves was a search engine where you would -- Jeeves was a butler character and you would ask him to find you things on the internet. It wasn't very good, at least compared to the standards that we've come to expect now. But yeah, I mean, it's not good for anybody that Google has become synonymous with search engines. Just the way we say, can you pass that box of Kleenex, we say, I'm going to Google something. And the product, at least in my opinion, has deteriorated where if there were competition within the industry, we might have seen them innovate to improve the interface, to improve functionality, to improve their AI. And we just haven't seen that. So that's why we have antitrust legislation in this country. It's for antitrust policy in this country. It's ultimately on behalf of the consumers, because if companies feel that they don't have to improve themselves, that they don't have to innovate, then they're not going to invest in innovating and making themselves better. And that's what happens when companies believe themselves to be a monopoly in the market.

Dave Bittner: We'll be right back. [ Music ] Well, let's move on to some of the other companies here. Ethan, you touch on Meta, Amazon, Apple, he rest of the big players. Surely they're looking at what's happening to Google with great interest.

Ethan Cook: Yeah, I think there's a huge kind of holding your breath moment for every one of these companies where Mehta's opinion and, you know, the closing argument phase for the remedies for Google's second trial with its ad exchange services is also wrapping up at the moment. You know, I think there's kind of a hold your breath to see what happens. I think this will be a huge test for the other companies. If they get pretty harsh rulings, if Google gets kind of, you know, slapped, I think they will begin to prepare themselves way more accordingly and take some steps to lessen the load. And if Google, if Mehta comes back, if, if Brikema, who's over presiding over the second case comes back with way more friendly remediations or the appeals will work, then these companies will probably not care as much. In each of these cases, the Trump administration has been very adamant that divestitures are the only way to, to solve these problems. And in the language that's coming out is very hostile. It's very along the lines of, to use the Google case, they have monopolized the digital space. Or I believe Bondi said that, you know, no longer are the American people subjected to the whims of a changing company, you know, or the political views of a changing company or something along those lines. The terminology I think is very hostile. It's not, you know, oh we're going to be, you know, maybe this, maybe that. It's a very, we are going after them. We are going to break them up. And it seems very adamant that there's no kind of leeway on what they want. I think the Meta case is particularly interesting. It stood out to me. To summarize for those who aren't familiar, the DOJ or the FTC, I believe actually is going after and saying that Meta would not have been successful without the acquisitions of both WhatsApp and Instagram. And it purposely made those acquisitions to remove any competition in the social media space and is part of a long-term strategy to basically just remove out competition over the years so that they can just have this uniform platform and they don't really care if WhatsApp and, you know, Instagram survived. Great, they did. But it's more so to remove the competition so they can just make sure that Facebook and the company as a whole monopolize the space, which seemingly is going in the favor of the government right now in the arguments as they're currently litigating that case.

Dave Bittner: You know, I'm old enough to remember the breakup of AT&T, which I think is before both of your times.

Ben Yelin: I'll ask Jeeves about that.

Dave Bittner: Yeah, it was before Jeeves' time. When AT&T was broken up, we were using 300-baud dial-up modems. But the reason I bring it up is I think it was hard to imagine breaking up something as big as AT&T and what that could possibly look like, right? A nationwide, long-distance company, you know, with global reach. How are you possibly going to effectively break that up? But they did. You know, we've got the Baby Bells here where we live. We've got Bell Atlantic, you know, and they made it happen. And I think similarly, it's hard to imagine breaking up these behemoth tech companies. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. It's just, it is hard for me to imagine, you know, how do you split up something like Facebook? How do you split up something like Google?

Ben Yelin: We just haven't seen this type of antitrust enforcement at any time during the past 25 years. And I think the prevailing attitude was, well, we don't need aggressive antitrust policy because there's been this wave of innovation. We're getting all of these cool, amazing products. Obviously, these companies are trying to out-compete one another. So even if you might say they have a narrow monopoly on a search engine or ad revenue, they're competing with each other for eyeballs, for clicks. What I think is really interesting about these cases is we're getting into more of an advanced age, more of a granular age, where we're looking specifically at like actual submarkets that exist in the broader market of big tech. So advertising, social media, search engines, it's something that we just haven't seen even to a small degree since the Microsoft cases of the early 2000s. I think that's what makes it so interesting. It's just we never expected to be here. I get that in the abstract, probably if you asked your median voter on the street, like, should we break up big tech companies? They'd probably say yes. But like, this is not something that to me, there was like a large public groundswell to support this. So it's just interesting, like, where this is coming from. And I think, Ethan, like the Occam's razor view that at least from Trump's perspective, it's sour grapes about 2020 becomes more of an appealing theory to me because I like I can't really track it otherwise. I can't get my head around why they've decided to take on this the suite of policies.

Ethan Cook: Yeah, I think there's an interesting kind of wrinkle to this that I've been grappling because, you know, to your point, then this isn't like some hot button issue, right? This isn't like a classic like a health care or defense that just galvanizes people to come out and vote.

Ben Yelin: Right.

Ethan Cook: So you have people hear antitrust and they go, oh, okay, you know, sure. I think an interesting aspect, and you kind of mentioned it, was over the past 20 years, we've kind of let these companies just do whatever they want to do. They were theoretically innovating. They've been generating a ton of money. They've made the USA powerhouse in terms of technological advancement. But I think an interesting wrinkle that I've been trying to figure out is, is part of this crackback happening -- and from both sides, because, you know, Biden was also pursuing a very similar agenda. Is this crackback related to some of the more dangers and harms that have come out associated with a lot of these companies? And there's been a shift in how we approach social media companies, how we approach online algorithms, and there's been this kind of feeling that that these markets have been designed to keep people kind of trapped on forever and generate revenue and clicks off them. Is there a flip off of that kind of saying, you know, we've had this feeling and we're going to kind of pull back from this as these companies have kind of expanded uncontrolled?

Dave Bittner: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because my next question was going to be and is going to be sort of out of left field. But bear with me here. What if instead of coming at these companies for antitrust, what if instead of that, we outlawed surveillance capitalism? What if Congress came at this and said, we're getting rid of these companies' abilities to track us? You know, we can still advertise, but you're going to have to do it the old fashioned way.

Ben Yelin: Put up a billboard that every car sees on the highway. Yeah.

Dave Bittner: Exactly. You know, the same way. I mean, you know, TV advertising worked, right? Advertisers will say targeted advertising is better, and that may be so, but at what cost? So my broader question is, could that have been an alternative way to come at this problem, or does it not matter because we're past the point that -- they've grown so big that there is no way for anyone to come in and be a meaningful competitor with them? They're blocked out.

Ben Yelin: I guess my initial instinct is that the market is too large to tolerate that at this point, because you're not going after just the biggest of the big companies if you go after surveillance capitalism. You are going after tons of smaller companies under which surveillance capitalism is their revenue-making model. I mean, that's how they make their money.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: So you'd be not just destroying these big companies that I think are easier political villains. You'd be destroying an entire industry, to which I would say as a consumer, maybe that might end up being a bad thing because I'd lose some of the services that I enjoy, including targeted advertising. I'm sorry. In some circumstances, I like the fact that if I've been searching something on the internet, it knows my interests. That might be an unpopular opinion, but I've caught myself taking advantage of that even though I think conceptually I'm against unregulated surveillance capitalism.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ethan Cook: I think there has been -- to answer your question, Dave, I think it's sort of both going on at the moment. We have these cases where we're attempting -- they haven't done it successfully, but the government is attempting to break up these major players who are engaging in -- a lot of them engaging in data collection and targeted advertising, et cetera, as you mentioned. But I think we've also seen a slew of new laws come through, maybe not all of them have successfully passed over the past two years, that have been way more focused and way more attentive to data collection, how we collect, who we collect. And while, again, like the privacy bill last year did not pass, the fact that we even introduced the privacy bill was, to me -- I was like, wow, this is a step in the right direction because we've had unfettered surveillance for years. And maybe this is a step. I think it won't go all the way to getting rid of it completely, but I think it's more so putting on rails. A huge part where we've been putting on rails is around children. States have been taking a huge amount of steps to saying what data you can and cannot collect regarding a minor, parental access, et cetera. And so I think while those laws are still being legally debated in courts as well as being introduced and reiterated on, I do think -- and that's why I made that comment earlier about this kind of shifting towards maybe we need to put up some guardrails around these companies. Maybe they are too big at this moment. It's kind of not just been, oh, antitrust them. It's kind of been this whole pendulum shift that's been happening slowly over the years, and it still sticks out to me when they had the congressional hearing where you had family members talking directly to Zuckerberg, talking about how his platform had directly harmed them. And you had the whole line of CEOs from every major social media platform kind of getting crushed for their impact on children.

Dave Bittner: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to ponder too, like would these antitrust cases have been brought had these companies stayed as awesome as we thought they were when they were on the rise? You know, when Google came out, Google was amazing.

Ben Yelin: It was amazing.

Ethan Cook: I mean, they added it to the dictionary. Google it, right? Right? You know, that's pretty fun.

Ben Yelin: Ethan, you have no idea how bad the previous generation of search engines were.

Ethan Cook: I don't know how bad it was, and I'm thankful that I do not, because, I mean, just from the brief reflections today, it sounded like it was horrible.

Ben Yelin: It was an amazing product. Facebook was amazing in its heyday.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: They all really have gone downhill. Like, this is not something I'm imagining.

Dave Bittner: No. No, how many of us use them begrudgingly? Like, oh, you know, I don't -- like, to me, it's kind of like, I think it's a lot like smoking, you know, where people who -- there's so many people who are smokers who don't want to be smokers anymore, but they feel stuck.

Ben Yelin: Oh, totally. It's an addiction.

Dave Bittner: Yeah, I feel that's the way a lot of people on Facebook are. They're like, I don't want to be on Facebook, but there's no other option, and I don't want to miss out on things, and it's terrible, and it's awful, and it's unhealthy, but what are you going to do?

Ben Yelin: I think they got high on their own supply, at least when we're talking about Meta Facebook, thinking that they were invincible, and no matter what they did, they had billions of customers who are just not going to leave. People wanted to keep in contact with their friends. They were addicted to their news feed. They were addicted to reels. And they are exploiting the fact that the market, at least in their eyes, was always going to be there, to put a bunch of just total trash on people's timelines, to the point where, to me, it's completely ruined Facebook.

Dave Bittner: Yeah.

Ben Yelin: Literal fake news, where there are these just spam accounts that are posting fake news on topics that are of interest to me. Like San Francisco 49ers, they'll say that their quarterback's wife just gave birth to twins, which is just not true. I'm like, why is that there in the first place? It's just clickbait.

Dave Bittner: Right.

Ben Yelin: And Facebook is making money from it, and it's just -- I know this is a bit of a rant. It sucks. It's terrible. And I was an early adopter of Facebook, and obviously there were things wrong with it in the late 2000s, early 2010s. It was addictive in its own right then, but it's gone significantly downhill. I think we've complained about the downfall of Google as a search engine, but a lot of these social media apps have just become way more spammy. So I think you're right that it's not a coincidence that an effort to hold these companies accountable for anti-competitive practices is coming at a time where the technology has deteriorated -- not the technology, the user experience has deteriorated over the last decade or so.

Dave Bittner: Right. Well, let's bring it home here, gents. Where do you suppose we're headed here? I mean, Ethan, let me start with you with your research here. What's to come?

Ethan Cook: Yeah, so I think, and I mentioned this earlier, I think the initial rulings on what these remediations are going to require for Google, because they've already been found guilty of monopoly in both of those cases. They're going to appeal, but regardless, they've been found that they've had a monopoly and illegally maintained it. What remediations are imposed will be a huge tone setter for the following ones and how they will react. I think regardless of whether breakups happen or not, or if it's only one company that gets broken up or, you know, none of them, I do think this is kind of building this momentum. And this momentum has, to me, following and tracking over the past couple of years, has felt like it's steadily getting bigger. And I think eventually it reaches a culmination point within the next, probably within this administration, where a major piece of legislation or major breakups happen or a very hostile effort is used to target these companies or target digital surveillance or something along those lines, which, while I think will create a ton of instability in markets and shake up a lot of things, ultimately has a good chance of being beneficial for the consumer in the long term.

Ben Yelin: I mean, we went through this a hundred years ago in the progressive era, 110 years ago, I guess.

Dave Bittner: I'd just like to note that I was not around for that.

Ben Yelin: Sure, Dave. If you say so.

Dave Bittner: I'll just fact check you on that one.

Ben Yelin: I mean, it was preceded by a gilded age of concentrated wealth and power. They were creating amazing products back then, too. I mean, the --

Dave Bittner: Railroads.

Ben Yelin: Railroads.

Dave Bittner: Steel.

Ben Yelin: Yeah.

Dave Bittner: Standard oil.

Ben Yelin: U.S. Steel. And there was a backlash. And that's kind of, not to get too philosophical here, but that's why we have democracy, is that at some point, people are going to get so fed up with the deterioration of these services and the concentration of so much wealth and power in so few of these entities that the system is going to kind of collapse into itself. And I don't think we're going to get as extreme a version of that, but I think we're going to get some type of reckoning for these companies that 10 years ago they weren't expecting.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. All right. Well, gentlemen, let's leave it there. We want to thank Ethan Cook for joining us. He is the author of the "Caveat" Newsletter, which if you are not already subscribed to, what are you waiting for? Go check it out. It's on our website. Sign up for that and enjoy Ethan's work. [ Music ] That is "Caveat" brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We would love to hear from you. We're conducting our annual audience survey to learn more about our listeners. We're collecting your insights through the end of this summer. There is a link in the show notes, and we would appreciate it if you would check it out. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. The show is mixed by Trey Hester. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. I'm Dave Bittner.

Ben Yelin: And I'm Ben Yelin.

Ethan Cook: And I'm Ethan Cook.

Dave Bittner: Thanks for listening.