Regulating Google search is a dumb idea that could actually happen

The conspiracy theory about Google’s search algorithms falls in line with others propagated by President Donald Trump (Obama’s birth certificate, the deep state, etc.) in that they are paranoid and largely fact-free, yet very hard to completely refute. Even when they are squarely refuted–as when Obama produced his birth certificate–they often live on. But since Google will never, ever, make public its search algorithm–nothing is more proprietary than that–speculation that it’s biased against conservatives will live on and on.

An antitrust case may be the one viable way that the White House or Congress could act against Google and other huge platforms like Facebook. And sure enough, by the afternoon of Aug 30, President Trump’s statements on the matter had begun to include the language of antitrust. “I won’t comment on the breaking up, of whether it’s that [Google] or Amazon or Facebook,” President Trump said. “As you know, many people think it is a very antitrust situation, the three of them. But I just, I won’t comment on that.” Interestingly, within hours of President Trump’s comments, one of the president’s main GOP loyalists (and apologists) in the Senate, Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT), sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons asking that the agency look into Google’s search and digital advertising businesses. The government may do Google harm by exacting large fines for antitrust violations, but that scenario does not seem a direct and proportionate remedy to the perceived problem President Trump complained of. So the real motivation for the penalty would always be in question. Was it just, or merely political retribution? Also, in order for the FTC or the Department of Justice to act, they would have to have clear evidence that a law has been broken. Considering the way US law treats search services like Google’s, that’s a tall order. “The Telecommunications Act of 1996, as I recall, kept edge services (although they weren’t known by that at the time) from being regulated by the FCC,” said ex-FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. “That leaves the FTC, and they have no broad regulatory power.”