New Justice Antitrust Boss Same as the Old Boss? Too Soon to Tell

April 18, 2025

In recent weeks, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson has shown his true colors as a Khanservative dedicated to continuing many of the antitrust actions, investigations and philosophies he inherited from former Chair Lina Khan. Now we’ve received our first indication that Gail Slater, the new Justice Department Antitrust Chief, may somewhat continue in the mold of her predecessor, Jonathan Kanter.

On Thursday, Slater partially won and partially lost a case launched earlier by Justice and 17 states, alleging that Google’s ad tech is monopolistic. Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia dismissed the monopoly charge against Google software that enables online advertising transactions. But Judge Brinkema upheld the charges that Google’s tools for online publishers and the tools advertisers use to buy ad space are monopolistic. Google vows to appeal.

Here are three early reactions.

• First, whatever the merits of the case, at least Judge Brinkema cast this ruling in traditional terms of harm to the competitive process and to customers and consumers. This is a sign that the far-out progressive theories of the Biden era have not yet taken root in the judiciary. Google may have fertile grounds for appeal in the judge’s take on “tying” arrangements that may ultimately be found to be in the interests of compatibility and affordability, rather than “exclusionary.”

• Second, despite this case, it is too early to characterize Slater’s approach going forward. One could imagine that Slater felt honor-bound to continue a case in its late phase.

• The third reaction emerges from the second. With Judge Amit Mehta having declared Google a monopoly in online search in August, there are a lot of remedies on the table. All of them are extreme. That case had centered around Google’s payment to Apple to make the search engine its default on the popular iPhone. But the remedies being considered would divorce major segments of Google from itself – divesting Chrome, the popular browser of the world’s premier search engine. That’s a bit like ordering Whirlpool to get out of the washing machine business.

On Monday, Judge Mehta will begin a three-week hearing on remedies. Let us hope that he sticks to the facts of the case before him and doesn’t entertain a thorough restructuring of Alphabet. With open hostility between Beijing and Washington, the last thing we need to do is to throw an anvil at one of our best swimmers in the race to dominate AI.