Basically because the current philosophy of the US justice department anti trust prosecutions is whether market dominance of the player harms ordinary people or causes them to incur higher cost. It is not really about actual monopoly power. Google has been pretty careful to stay consistent with this philosophy.

This wasn't always so in the US and it's not the same philosophy in EU. However, it is a valid and consistent view.

Corollary 1: You are legally allowed to kill all of your competition while not improving your monopoly product as long as you keep your product free.

Corollary 2: Human attention is considered equivalent to monetary value of exactly $0 by US government.

Corollary 3: You should never trust your government to be smart or do right thing for you.

Counterpoint: If you strongly want your government to change its approach, organize to change the government.

In US, it's very safe to do this without violence but even in significantly less safe places, people have successfully done this peacefully [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Delhi_Legislative_Assem...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_West_Bengal_Legislative...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2005_Bihar_Legislati...

Why would it need to be shut down.

Because they were reinterpreted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox

I’m not defending Republicans but as someone else said American anti trust law has always been about protecting consumers and not businesses.

Unfortunately, everything I could site about the difference comes from Ben Thompson’s (of stratechery fame) Exponent Podcast.

The current interpretation of antitrust law in the United States is fairly new (it's only been around for 50 years or so, and as I understand it, largely driven by The Antitrust Paradox by Robert Bork [yes, that Bork]). Before that, there was broader enforcement in the antitrust sphere.

Of course there is a Planet Money episode about that....

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...