 No, the US Department of Justice and eight states are suing Google for its alleged dominance of the online advertising market. The company is accused of maintaining a monopoly that US officials say had corrupted legitimate competition in the tech industry. Prosecutors want the tech giant's advertising business to be broken up. It's the fifth antitrust lawsuit filed by US officials against Google since 2020. For 15 years, Google has pursued a course of anti-competitive conduct that has allowed it to halt the rise of rival technologies, manipulate auction mechanics to insulate itself from competition, and force advertisers and publishers to use its tools. In so doing, Google has engaged in exclusionary conduct to severely weaken, if not destroy, competition in the ad tech industry. Mr. Schultz is competition director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joins me now live from San Francisco. Good to have you with us on the program, Mr. Schultz again. I mean, already Google is in hot water with a case pending over the monopoly to cut the competition off. How connected is this particular lawsuit to everything that's happened in the last few years? It's quite connected. This one is significant because it's the most significant lawsuit to go after the really the engine of Google's revenues, which is its web advertising business. Everything that Google does from the design of search to the design of Android and the Chrome web browser is all affected by search and the imperative to preserve and grow the profits from web advertising because that's simply the biggest part of Google's revenues. That creates a lot of conflicts of interest. So it's all of the other subjects of the previous lawsuits concerning Android and so on. This is really the overriding concern when it comes to Google. One of the issues that has raised eyebrows is how unique this particular situation is in the sort of the bipartisan approach to dealing with Google from both state and federal level. I know you're not a politician, but are you surprised that both Democrats and Republicans and state and federal level all seem to be on the same page when it comes to dealing with Google and sending a very strong message? I'm not surprised because at heart this isn't a partisan issue. We all use the internet. We all want different websites to be able to thrive and to be supported by advertising. We all dislike pervasive online surveillance that comes with the modern web advertising business that's dominated by Google. And approaching that through the lens of antitrust is a way that an approach that doesn't distort speech. It doesn't really favor left or right or traditional political divides. You've touched on it slightly here about what sort of a message suits send to the industry. You all want a fair internet, an available internet, but does it send the desired message in the short and long term about how you deal with monopolies? I think so. These suits, they can take a long time and their outcome can be very uncertain. But even if the DOJ and the states don't achieve a breakup of Google or a spinning off of some of its advertising businesses, there's still positive effects on the internet that can come from this. And the model for that, among others, is Microsoft after it was sued by the government around the turn of the millennium, even though they didn't achieve a breakup of the company, it really did change the company's behavior. And I think that's a strong possibility here in a model that with the public chastisement and with the increased oversight and scrutiny that comes from a suit like this, it disciplines companies' practices so that even if these business structures remain, a lot of the practices that are specifically called out in this lawsuit are going to decrease over time at a minimum. And just briefly, how quickly do you think we'll see results? I think the earliest would be about three years and more likely five or six. It'd be interesting to see what does happen for the moment, Mitch Schultz. Thanks so much for joining us from San Francisco. Thank you.