One of the enduring ironies of antitrust law is that governments often step in to solve perceived problems that market forces are already addressing. A prime example: Standard Oil. Its grip on the oil market a century ago weakened not because of the 1911 antitrust breakup but due to newly discovered oil fields in the Midwest, which undercut its dominance.

Similarly, the breakup of AT&T in 1984 didn’t bring about the demise of the Bell telephone monopoly. The real shift came from new fiber-optic networks—launched around 1984—and the development of cellular networks. These rendered traditional phone monopolies obsolete. In these cases, as in others, antitrust enforcement proved costly but had little impact on market power.

Now, we see the same pattern with Google. After years of litigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) secured a conviction alleging that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in general search. Proposed remedies range from breaking up the company to altering its default search engine arrangements with Apple and others. Simultaneously, another DOJ trial targeting Google’s online advertising role is getting underway.

However, both cases miss a crucial point: Market forces are already dismantling whatever dominance Google may have had. In general search, Google’s share of desktop searches has dropped by 10 percentage points over the past six years, as has its share of search-related advertising. Microsoft’s Bing is gaining ground in search. In the advertising arena, competitors like Amazon and Apple have seen their combined share rise from around 13 percent to nearly 30 percent in the same timeframe. Given these facts, it’s hard to argue that Google is illegally maintaining a monopoly.

The DOJ’s misunderstanding of Google’s business model is particularly glaring in the search case. Search, in reality, isn’t a standalone market. Google and its competitors provide search tools not as an end in itself but to capture user time and attention—valuable commodities they market to advertisers. Essentially, search is a form of barter: Users trade their time for relevant search results, and companies pay Google and others for access to this audience. But search is just one of many ways to capture user attention. Competing platforms—such as Instagram and LinkedIn—also command significant portions of users’ time, making the antitrust focus on search feel outdated.

Consider search advertising, which accounts for 40 percent of all digital ad spending in the US, which has more than doubled since 2019. Google’s search platform is prized by advertisers, commanding $2.32 per click, compared with Bing’s $1.54. Yet even as this revenue flows in, Google’s share of search advertising is shrinking, and it faces increasing competition from social platforms where advertisers are willing to pay even more—$3.56 per click on Instagram and $5.26 on LinkedIn. The DOJ’s case fails to appreciate that Google’s so-called dominance is under constant threat from rivals for user attention.

This fundamental misunderstanding of competition for user attention also confounds the DOJ’s case in online advertising. It’s unclear whether the judge will grasp the contradiction in the government’s argument: the claim that Google is an abusive monopolist while its business is rapidly losing ground to competitors.

The US isn’t alone in this regulatory misstep. In Europe, Google lost its appeal against a €2.4 billion fine for allegedly monopolizing comparison shopping services. But here, too, regulators failed to appreciate how the businesses work. Comparison shopping is about directing consumer attention to satisfy numerous business arrangements including affiliate marketing, order processing, and product promotion. Yet the European Commission prosecuted Google for presumably directing consumer attention based on economic incentives.

As we watch the effects of these cases unfold, it’s worth asking: How often do antitrust regulators truly understand the markets they’re trying to fix? And when are markets the better regulator? Now as in the past, it seems that the markets are better.

Learn more: DuckDuckGo’s Bold Play to Weaken Competition | Europe’s Antitrust Misstep: How Its Decision Against Google Will Harm Consumers and Businesses | Everyone Loses in Google’s Antitrust Ruling | Lax Merger Enforcement Is a Myth