The Washington Monthly - Let's Make Google Share Some Secrets

Policy analyst Daniel Hanley demonstrates how federal antitrust enforcers could use compulsory licensing to help bolster and speed up other anti-monopoly efforts, especially when it comes to tech giant Google.

Last week, President Biden signed a landmark executive order that requires the administrative agencies of the federal government to promote fair competition in the marketplace. The order arrives against the backdrop of the greatest resurgence in antitrust enforcement in almost a generation, most of it focused on Big Tech. Leveraging the House antitrust subcommittee’s landmark 450-page report released in October, federal and state antitrust enforcers initiated a blockbuster case against Google and Congress introduced five bipartisan bills aimed squarely at Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

While federal administrative agencies carry out Biden’s order and Congress puts its antitrust legislation through the lengthy review process, federal antitrust enforcers like the Department of Justice and the FTC should consider a speedier remedy that hasn’t been used much lately: compulsory licensing.

Compulsory licensing requires a firm to share certain intellectual property with all interested parties. History shows that compulsory licensing helps other remedies, such as constraints on which markets a corporation may enter, creating a vibrant marketplace with significant new competitors. Google would be an especially strong candidate for compulsory licensing.

Why Google?

Do you even have to ask?

Google leverages its near-total dominance of the search-engine market to extract highly favorable terms from companies dependent on its services. For example, Google requires phone manufacturers that want to use its Android smartphone operating system to make its search engine the default provider for mobile searches. Android thus allows Google to extend its search dominance from desktops and laptops to mobile phones all over the world.

Google also uses its search engine to favor its own services. According to the House antitrust subcommittee report, Google services cover nearly 100 percent of the screen for mobile searches and approximately 25 percent for desktop searches. In 2007, then-Google executive Marissa Mayer admitted that Google intentionally ranked its own services ahead of other sites.

Read the full article on The Washington Monthly here.