You have to be a little flattered when a company as powerful
as Google feels the need to go after you.
"I think of it as a great compliment," said
Matthew Stoller, a fellow with Citizens Against Monopoly, a newly launched
nonprofit organization. "What Google did is a reflection of their
intellectual beliefs and their strength. You don't suppress information if
you're winning the debate."
Citizens Against Monopoly is new because Stoller and a group
of his colleagues were recently fired from their old jobs at New America, a
left-leaning think tank that had been home to the Open Markets program led by prominent
academic Barry Lynn.
The New York Times reported that the move came after Eric
Schmidt, Alphabet's executive chairman, expressed displeasure with some of
Lynn's recent work. Alphabet, which owns Google, is a major funder of New
America. The search giant had complained about Lynn multiple times, and in
emails reported by the Times, his boss warned him that he was endangering the
group's relationship with the company.
Google and New America both denied that the company played a
part in the decision to cut Lynn's team, though the statement from the latter
didn't include any details that conflicted with the Times
story.
"We don’t agree with every group 100 percent of the
time," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "While we sometimes
respectfully disagree, we respect each group’s independence, personnel decisions
and policy perspectives."
In one sense, the episode is a bittersweet testament to the
new level of influence the program's work was starting to enjoy among
Washington lawmakers. When Democrats unveiled their grand economic strategy to
fight Donald Trump earlier this summer, the fight against monopoly power was a
central plank.
Trump's rise may have been the direct impetus for this
shift, but most of the ideas can be traced back to the Open Markets team. In an
interview with The Atlantic earlier this year, congressman Ro Khanna, a
freshman Democrat representing Silicon Valley, cited the writing of Stoller and
his colleague Lina Khan as the inspiration for a monopoly-focused caucus he's
organizing in the House.
"Their work has gotten the attention of some of us in
Congress that we need to reorient antitrust policy," Khanna said.
It's easy to see why Google would be worried. In June, the
European Union hit Google with a landmark $2.7 billion fine for abusing its market
power, the biggest antitrust penalty in the EU's history. (A celebratory note
Lynn posted to New America's site proved to be the final straw in Lynn's
clashes with think tank leadership, Stoller confirmed.)
Stoller says the EU's regulatory actions have effectively
made Google a public utility in the eyes of the law, which means it's treated
more like phone companies or infrastructure than a private enterprise—and
therefore susceptible for more stringent regulation. He thinks the United
States will inevitably follow Europe's lead in that regard.
One of the guiding ideas of the antitrust school of thought
to which Stoller belongs is that competition law as it's currently practiced in
the United States isn't equipped to deal with the unprecedented power of
companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, which naturally trend towards
monopolies because of the network effect fostered by the internet.
"We're going to have to choose whether we want to live
in a democracy or allow Facebook, Google, and Amazon to continue what they're
doing," Stoller said.
As antitrust law is interpreted now, deals and mergers are
reviewed solely on the basis of whether or not they immediately harm consumers.
This narrow consensus took hold around 1980, and it replaced the more robust
regulatory regimen that had been in place since the New Deal.
Stoller and his colleagues believe that concentrated market
power is at the center of many of the political problems faced in the country
today, and the only solution is a return to the 20th century tradition that
accounted not just for short-term consumer welfare but jobs lost, small
businesses killed, long-term effects and other factors.
"Concentrated corporate actors are driving a lot of the
anger and frustration [of today's political climate]," Stoller said.
"These are the people that organize our economy. These are the people that
value things, buy things from you, mediate information, hire you, furnish you
with capital it’s not everything but it’s how it works in America."
As for the average voter, the best thing you can do is learn
about the wide-reaching effects of market competition, he says.
"You have to actually educate yourself as citizens on
how to organize political power in a democracy," Stoller said.
