Google’s legal department has its hands full these days, given numerous antitrust lawsuits filed both by the Justice Department and individual states targeting different parts of its business. Our scoop today—about how a bipartisan group of senators is putting together a bill to force Google to divest its ad tech operations—will only add to the lawyers’ workload. Where is this all heading?
Washington, D.C., of course, is the global epicenter of dysfunction, so betting on anything concrete emerging from Congress might seem silly. But given the hostility toward Google on both sides of the political spectrum, and the compelling nature of the case made in the states’ complaint about Google’s power in the digital ad market, something seems likely to happen. In fact, as our story reported, Google in the past has already contemplated spinning off the ad businesses to get ahead of antitrust pressure.
