Where Americans put their trust

For the past three years the American public has trusted Amazon and Google more than the federal government. Despite that higher level of trust, the federal government is suing Google and Amazon.

Google and Amazon are not without fault. Amazon’s marketplace includes unsafe and counterfeit products that the company seems unable to completely tackle. Google, best known for its search engine, can make seemingly arbitrary decisions that harm small and medium-sized businesses.

Yet these companies remain immensely popular. According to SimilarWeb, 90 percent of searches first take place on Google. “Google” has become a verb. Nearly 168 million people worldwide are Amazon Prime members, with users in the U.S. paying $14.99 a month or $139 annually for membership.

It’s puzzling then that the less-trusted federal government, along with most states, are suing to transform the more trusted Google search, make Amazon Prime more expensive, or break up Amazon.

Recently the biggest antitrust trial since Microsoft’s trial in 1998 began. At issue is Google’s search dominance, with the federal government (the Department of Justice) and state attorneys general asserting that Google acted anticompetitively by paying for exclusivity deals with Apple or favoring Google search on Android (owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company) devices.

Meanwhile, the federal government via the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is accusing Amazon of making Prime membership too difficult to cancel.

These suits will all negatively affect consumers’ experience using these platforms.

Amazon’s size has allowed it to economize in storing and delivering goods, passing along those savings to consumers. If Prime became more expensive to use due to government fines or penalties or Amazon were broken up into smaller companies, then consumers would be worse off.

It is an important and proper role of the federal government to oversee and ensure the largest companies in the world aren’t harming consumers by self-interested choices. However, it’s this very self-interest that’s been a boon to customers all over the U.S. and the world. In these cases, the less trustworthy federal government should carefully consider the costs before impacting the companies Americans use and trust even more.