Note to Feds: Don’t Destroy Google

For most of human history, an enchanted box that contained all knowledge and answered all questions would’ve been the stuff of allegory. For modern internet users, Google is one more thing to take for granted. Just consider how aggressively the Department of Justice has been trying to break up the company.

A federal judge ruled last year that Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., had unlawfully wielded its market power when signing agreements with distributors such as Apple Inc. and Mozilla Corp. to use its search engine as a default in their operating systems or browsers. The decision was rather puzzling, as those contracts were nonexclusive, competitively negotiated and enabled users to switch search engines with trivial ease. But even if one agreed with the ruling, it left a crucial question: What should be done?