There are new reports that the Department of Justice is prepping an anti-trust investigation into Google.
CNet:
The US Department of Justice is preparing to kick off an antitrust investigation of Google, according to a report late Friday by The Wall Street Journal.
The department is expected to examine Google’s search practices, as well as its other businesses, the report said. Though the Federal Trade Commission investigated Google several years ago, this time it’ll step aside for the DOJ to conduct the inquiry.
After a two-year investigation wrapped up in 2013, the FTC decided unanimously that Google wasn’t violating any antitrust laws, after allegations of biased search results. The DOJ’s antitrust division “has been laying the groundwork for the probe” over the last few weeks, the Journal said.
Neither Google nor the Justice Department immediately responded to a request for comment.
It could absolutely be argued that Google should be broken up. But that’s not my primary concern. My primary concern revolves around how companies like Google have conspired to stifle free political speech on the Internet.
You could break up Google into 100 different companies. And if each one of those companies isn’t forced to allow free political speech on their sites, than it is not really all that relevant to me if Google is broken up or not.
It feels like hoax solutions to the problem of speech censorship are being thrown around all over the place. We’ve also seen many so-called “conservatives” ramble all sorts of deranged nonsense about free markets etc.. And they claim that because of free markets we can’t have free speech on the Internet. It’s a retarded and stupid argument.
It’s especially crazy considering the Federal Communications Commission could declare these big tech sites as utilities and force them to provide everybody equal universal access. But since Donald Trump won’t order the FCC to do this, all of his political supporters are just being systematically banned from the digital public square.
I am not optimistic that anything substantive is going to be done about this problem.
