In less than a year, US courts have ruled that the world’s most powerful tech company broke the law – twice.

In August, a federal judge in Washington ruled that Google illegally maintained its search monopoly by locking up defaults on browsers and devices. In April, a federal judge in Virginia found that Google illegally monopolized the digital advertising market, manipulating auctions, restricting and stifling competitors. These two rulings, the most significant antitrust wins against a tech giant in decades, should be a turning point in the digital economy.

The rulings against Google’s illegal monopoly in digital advertising offer a once-in-a-generation chance to redesign the infrastructure of surveillance that underpins Google’s ill-gotten dominance. But if regulators settle for symbolic fines or behavioral tweaks, it will do nothing to structurally reform the business model and incentives that underpin Google’s illegal dominance. In a three-week hearing that began this week, the US justice department is urging a judge to break up the company. Whether we seize this moment to break up these concentrations of power will shape the future of markets, media and democratic governance.

Google is emblematic of the platform economy in which we now live. The Silicon Valley corporation and its platform brethren provide core infrastructure – for advertising, for information access, for the economy at large. Google’s control of the search ecosystem, from its Chrome browser and Android operating system to its dominance in digital advertising and search, gives it unrivaled power over who gets heard and who gets paid. That power has stifled competition,

© The Guardian