The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit against Google has finally come to trial, and the stakes are high. Focused on the company’s original search unit, the suit contends that Google’s parent company Alphabet abused its power over search and used illegal agreements to cement its dominance of the market. The DOJ has on its side the clear fact of Google’s search monopoly on mobile and desktop, as well as embarrassing company documents. The DOJ and an accompanying group of US states won a broadly similar case against Microsoft in 1998.

But the company has its own advantages, above all the weak iteration of US antitrust law in the neoliberal era. Modern antitrust law relies on companies raising prices before government intervention, while Google’s products are free, and the corporate agreements at issue are not exclusive.

Google of course wields enormous power over our lives; whatever the outcome of the case, that is unlikely to change. With antitrust action vanishingly unlikely to end its dominance, bringing Google under public, democratic control is a better option.