This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 12, 2024, and Caleb Brown.

A federal court ruled last week that Google has built an illegal monopoly in search.

But that's not the end of the story, and the ruling highlights questions about what exactly a monopoly

is and what it does, and how courts define relevant markets in deciding which firms are monopolies.

Cato's Jennifer Huddleston comments.

What were the broad claims being made against Google.

You and I have discussed them here.

I think I've talked with Brian Albrecht as well about that here,

but what were the broad claims? Well, I think we always have to be clear which Google Antitrust case we're talking about

because there are two pretty significant ones, one involving ad tech and then the one where the decision

came down recently involving the default search engine in a lot of different products being

Google,

as well as some questions around specific types of tech advertising.

What the court found was that the court found that Google had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act

under some of these exclusive distribution deals that it had established,

as well as that it was a monopoly in a very specific type of advertising and that was

text search advertising not search advertising in general, but within this kind of specific subset of advertising.

Okay, so a monopoly in a very narrow range of business.

Well, yes and no.

So one of the really interesting things in this case,

and in most of these cases involving tech companies,

is this question of market definition. So in this case the judge lays out that the

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