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11 22 24 Colorado AG Phil Weiser on DOJ seeking to force sale of Chrome by Google
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado. There's only one member FDIC. State Attorney General along with the Justice Department proposing a robust package of remedies to end what they say is Google's unlawful monopoly over Internet search engines, tourist or competition to benefit consumers. And one of those attorney generals is Phil Wieser, who led a bipartisan coalition of 38 states and filing a lawsuit back in December of 2020 to allege that Google illegally maintained its monopoly over other general search engines through anti-competitive contracts and conduct. AG Wieser joins us now in the KOA Common Spirit Health hotline. Always love to have you on Attorney General Wieser. I want to ask from Jump because I'm confused about this. How does Google make money off their search engine? This is an important point. The search engine feeds search advertising. So when you put in the search, you know, KOA, what comes up, you'll see there's advertisements, these text advertisements that are often above your organic search results and even on the side. Those ads, those text ads are literally billions and billions of dollars making Google one of the most profitable companies in the world. So Google has not only monopolized the search business, it's monopolized the search text ad business. And that's actually a very lucrative monopoly that it has. We want to basically restore competition to this market. So that other rivals in this market can compete on the merits, give consumers more choice, better privacy protections, more innovation. And ultimately, if you lower the cost of ads, you lower prices to consumers as well. Attorney General Wieser, what happens next is Google required to sell Chrome or the rules in place to make sure that another monopoly doesn't happen again. This is the remedy stage of this case. You may remember we won on the liability. Google was found to be a monopolist and to have abused its monopoly power. The question that the court's now considering is what to do about it. What's the right way to remedy the harms that have happened in this market? The filing we did was our proposed approach. Google is going to come up with what its supposed approach is. The judge is going to conduct hearings. Hey, we're not going to have a final answer on this probably till later this spring. Google's lawyers argued that people chose the search engine because it was superior to others like Microsoft's Bing. Do they have a point? And I put it out there, Google has become the lexicon like calling tissue Kleenix, calling a cotton swab Q-tips, calling a copier a Xerox. The judge actually rejected that argument in the first stage of the proceeding when it ruled that Google was acting as a monopolist and abused its position in the marketplace. What the judge found is that defaults matter. So, for example, when you get an iPhone and it has a automatic default to have Google as the search engine when you do a search in your browser or when you have a, in this case, Chrome browser, which defaults to Google, that actually puts a huge thumb on the scale. And Google, through a range of actions, basically established this monopoly position prevented others from getting a foothold in the marketplace. The question before the court is what are we going to do about it now? It's a little late for them to make arguments that they established their position on the merit because the judges are rejected that position. You said if this monopoly is broken up, it could ultimately lower prices for consumers. What else could it mean for consumers? Innovation is a big issue in this case. So the way I would put this into context is the first generation of the search came when we were all using desktop computers. And we don't have any quarrel with how Google got its monopoly position on the desktop. But then when the mobile internet started, Google locked up all these ways to distribute its product, browsers, it paid people off, the phones, it paid people off. And they didn't really face competition in that mobile internet. We're now on the precipice of AI as a way that we're going to have search happen in all sorts of different parts of our lives. We want to make sure that as we have this new era, it's a competitive era where everyone gets to innovate and gets to develop products and services that can compete on the merits and that Google doesn't lock up all of these distribution channels that no one else has a chance to compete. And when people can offer better products to consumers, more innovative products, better things happen. That's the American way. I know you have your eyes on a lot of things. I want to pivot while we have you on with us. The incoming Trump administration says it's going to begin mass deportations. They say, right, as soon as the president elect takes office, some states have signaled they will not work with the administration in doing that. I'm curious to ask you, where does the law for states begin and end with national law and with this initiative that's being floated? It all depends on how this proposed process goes forward. I'm committed to protecting the law, protecting Colorons and ensuring that whatever happens fairly, when you use the word "mass deportations," the huge risk is that it's going to be indiscriminate that citizens will get swept up in it, that dreamers will get swept up in it, that people who are protected in some way, that's not okay by me. Due process of law means everyone's treated fairly, everyone has circumstances that are unique to them that get taken into account. If there is illegal activity, if people in Colorado are mistreated, then it's my responsibility to protect people of Colorado. We work with the federal government collaboratively on a lot of different fronts. I don't know what's going to happen in the next chapter, and we'll be ready for whatever does. I'm not asking you to necessarily stake out a position, but when you see California saying they're not going to help in this process, you as being the top law enforcer here in Colorado, what's your legal perspective on that besides what you already detailed? Colorado has a law that discusses how our law enforcement focuses on Colorado law enforcement issues. That's an important point. In the first Trump administration, there was an effort to command and coerce Colorado law enforcement to engage in immigration enforcement that, in some cases, as I mentioned, with the case of the dreamers, for example, could be illegal. We in Colorado want our law enforcement keeping us safe and being serious about safety. To the extent that Trump administration tries to coerce us to use our law enforcement for different terms or to command law enforcement that's under Colorado's authority, I was this and in fact, we had a case in the first Trump administration over that very issue where they were threatening us with with holding grant funds that we were entitled to. We won that case to protect Colorado's rights to manage our law enforcement. Colorado Attorney General Phil Wiser, thank you so much for your time as always. My pleasure. Thank you, guys. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Remember FDIC.