Checking The Tech Wreck Spec

It's definitely one of those "the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, but is serving a purpose" things here, but the Trump regime is coming to break up Google.

The U.S. Justice Department is preparing an investigation of Alphabet Inc’s Google to determine whether the tech giant broke antitrust law in operating its sprawling online businesses, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Officials from the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission, which both enforce antitrust law, met in recent weeks to give Justice jurisdiction over Google, said the sources, who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

The potential investigation represents the latest attack on a tech company by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has accused social media companies and Google of suppressing conservative voices on their platforms online.

One source said the potential investigation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, focused on accusations that Google gave preference to its own businesses in searches.
A spokesman for the Justice Department said he could not confirm or deny that an investigation was being considered. Google declined comment.

Early in 2013, the FTC closed a long-running investigation of Google, giving it a slap on the wrist. Under FTC pressure, Google agreed to end the practice of “scraping” reviews and other data from rivals’ websites for its own products, and to let advertisers export data to independently assess campaigns.

Google’s search, YouTube, reviews, maps and other businesses, which are largely free to consumers but financed through advertising, have catapulted it from a start-up to one of the world’s richest companies in just two decades.

Along the way, it has made enemies in both the tech world, who have complained to law enforcers about its market dominance, and in Washington, where lawmakers have complained about issues from its alleged political bias to its plans for China.

Now let's be honest here, the Trump regime is coming for Google solely because they don't want to share the kind of data manipulation power that it has with a company that it doesn't control.  It's taking out a threat to Trump's autocratic rule of our crumbling republic.

Having said that, Google is far too powerful and is definitely violating antitrust rules on its search engines and ad business.  Google is far from being alone in a world with trillion-dollar tech giants like Amazon and Apple, but breaking it up is a nice start.