070 Jonathan Kanter| power and competition

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November 25, 2024 • 18 mins

JONATHAN KANTER

This episode was recorded on November 18, 2024, the day when it was reported that Senior antitrust officials at the Justice Department plan to ask a judge to order Google to divest its Chrome web browser, Bloomberg reported citing anonymous sources. The department also intends to ask federal judge Amit Mehta, who declared Google's search engine a monopoly in August, to mandate actions concerning artificial intelligence and the Android mobile operating system. The enforcement actions are the product of the Justice Department’s multiyear case against Google which sought to prove that the tech giant has a web search monopoly in the U.S. The Justice Department won its case federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets. The remedies are yet to be decided and will likely be fought in federal courts. Many parallels exist between this case and US v Standard Oil in the early 20th century and US v Microsoft in the early 21st century.

The remarkable person leading this effort which at its root goes to the heart of free markets, power and competition is Assistant Attorney General of the United States’ Department of Justice Antitrust Division. He is deeply thoughtful and his mind is expansive, especially at the intersection of the law, free markets. Prior to this, Kanter worked as an antitrust attorney at the FTC and in private practice. AAG Kanter is considered a critic of “big tech” and DOJ has worked to block a record number of mergers on antitrust grounds. During his tenure, the DOJ won its first conviction in a criminal monopolization suit in four decades

Jonathan has a very humble beginning in a working class neighborhood of Queens and graduated from SUNY Albany and Washington University School of Law. After graduating from law school, Kanter first worked as an antitrust lawyer at the FTC. He later worked in private practice, where he represented clients including Microsoft and Yelp as an associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Kanter was later a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft followed by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Two other notable cases he has led include an antitrust suit related to JetBlue's attempted acquisition of Spirit, and one against Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment. Upon filing the lawsuit, Kanter stated that "Live music should not be available only to those who can afford to pay the Ticketmaster tax".

Much of his work, as was his confirmation by the United States Senate, has broad support across party lines, a rare thing in today’s Washington.