Why is Barr going after Google?

For months, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has hinted that it intends to crack down on Silicon Valley. It recently took a big step closer as senior antitrust officials met with their state counterparts to plot out a case against Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Quite what they plan to argue isn’t yet clear. But as the final months of Mr. Trump’s first term wind down, and an election draws near, some exceptional skepticism is in order.

One reason for caution is that Attorney General William Barr has not exactly been a disinterested enforcer of competition law. Quite the opposite: In recent testimony, a senior Justice Department whistleblower described how Mr. Barr pressured antitrust prosecutors to harass automakers (and others) for transparently political reasons.

Now, according to news reports, Mr. Barr has taken an unusual interest in the Google case. Why? In a recent interview with Fox News, he intimated that he hopes to use antitrust law to punish tech companies for censoring conservative viewpoints, a frequent preoccupation of Mr. Trump. Never mind that this accusation is false, and that tech companies would be entirely within their rights to so discriminate if they chose. The whole thing has nothing to do with antitrust.

Perhaps Mr. Barr was musing idly, and perhaps the department has more legitimate objections in mind. But even under more traditional theories of competition law, Google makes an odd target.

Feasibly, a case might be made against its dominance of the online advertising market, for instance. Combined with Facebook, Google took in about 60% of digital ad spending last year. Yet there’s no law against building a good product. And with pressure rising from Amazon and other contenders, online ad rates have fallen by more than 40% over the past decade. That doesn’t look like a market lacking in competition.

Nor could anyone credibly argue that Google has harmed consumers, the standard traditionally applied in antitrust analysis. To the contrary, it gives them (among other things) access to limitless email, a smartphone operating system, innovative mapping software and a search engine that ranks among the greatest inventions of the last century — all for free. Its targeted advertising has been a boon to businesses big and small. That’s to say nothing of its work on driverless cars, quantum computing or esoteric life-extension technologies.

Even an otherwise blameless company shouldn’t get a pass for anticompetitive behavior, of course. And some allege that Google has unfairly privileged its own products, pursued harmful mergers and engaged in other dubious conduct. If the Justice

Department imposed targeted remedies for such violations after a transparent investigation, it would be entirely appropriate.

Yet the Trump administration has suggested nothing of the sort publicly. If its track record is any guide, this case is more likely to amount to a political attack with a belabored legal rationale attached. Even if its motives are pure, the administration should be wary: Government intervention in a market where no obvious harm has been caused to consumers — and in pursuit of vague or unrelated objectives — is a recipe for disaster.

The fact is, for all the criticism leveled at tech companies, they employ hundreds of thousands of people, create immensely useful products, propel what growth the American economy still enjoys and are among the most trusted brands going. They need to follow the rules like everyone else. But abusing antitrust law to clobber them for electoral gain won’t end well for anyone.