is the us government suing google because it is doing its job ruro kuo asks on techmaybe all google needed to keep from acting like a monopoly was more effective government oversightvideocreditcreditby ruro kuooct 20 2020this article is part of the on tech newsletter you can sign up here to receive it weekdaysthe us government sued google on tuesday claiming that the company is an illegal monopoly my colleagues called it the governments most significant legal challenge to a tech companys market power in a generationthis legal case is going to be loud confusing and will most likely drag on for years more confusing lawsuits against google from us states are probably coming too what will be most important to remember are the big questions at the heart of this does google break the rules to stay on top and if so does that hurt all of usso yes this is about politics and legal minutiae but ultimately this case boils down to whether the technology that we use could be better and whether the american economy could be more fairand through all this drama i have a lingering question is the government suing google because the government itself wasnt doing its joball of the activity that the justice department now says is evidence of google maintaining an illegal monopoly over search and search advertising has been known for years and could possibly have led to a crackdown by agencies like the us federal trade commission and the justice department those agencies are responsible for keeping watch on companies for signs of potentially abusive behaviorand yet under both democratic and republican presidents in recent years google faced few substantive government enforcement actions for anything it did that made the company stronger and harder to unseat if you let your kid act up again and again without consequences should you be surprised that it keeps happeningin tuesdays lawsuit the justice department accused google of shutting out rivals through tactics like paying phone companies and others to ensure that googles web search engine has a prominent position on android smartphones and on iphones this behavior the government lawsuit said holds back competition that could make better products for all of usbut this activity hasnt been a hushhush conspiracy cooked up in underground bunkers at google headquartersweve known for years that google pays apple billions of dollars each year to make sure its search engine is the one that people encounter on their iphones and in the safari web browser its not a secret that google had contracts with phone companies that required them to include google apps on smartphones and make its search engine practically inescapablethe european unions antitrust regulators fined google over similar tactics in 2018 the eu required changes to googles behavior although some competitors have said they are ineffectivereading the us governments lawsuit i was mostly left wondering why its happening now almost all the substantive allegations about google abusing its power could have been made and were years