Comment by philwelch

6 days ago

In 62 days we will have a completely different Department of Justice that is unlikely to follow the current administration’s approach to these issues, so I’m surprised that they’re even bothering.

This has to be the case of the lifetime to anyone at the DOJ that worked on it. Of course they want to see it to the end. And there's no reason to believe that the approach would be different.

Like, who exactly in the new administration is a fan of Google? The Republicans have complained for years about a perceived bias. Trump vowed during the campaign that he'd prosecute Google if he won re-election.

They'll absolutely continue driving that case, if nothing else to use as leverage to try to force Google into making pro-conservative algorithmic changes.

  • My understanding is that this is based on a fairly novel antitrust theory that only exists inside the Biden administration. I expect the new DOJ to attack Google for entirely different reasons. But you might be right.