How the tech titan plans to argue that it’s not a monopoly.

As Reback puts it, the government's approach has traditionally been: "We won't punish you for being successful. But if you're a monopolist and you spit on the sidewalk, we'll break up your company."

Setting aside the idea of somehow splitting up Google—no one serious has come close to suggesting that—monopoly Google could expect a relentless stream of litigation. Historically, this has been a nightmare for the target companies, hemming in their management and constraining their business decisions. It was an antitrust problem that forced AT&T to license the transistor in 1956 at no cost. And as Reback notes in a recent book, Free the Market!, advocating for more interventionist competition policies, it wasn't a government monopoly lawsuit that broke Standard Oil's power—it was Texas regulators' decision to hound Standard Oil with litigation. With Standard unable to exploit major new oil discoveries in the state, new competitors like Texaco arose.

Substitute tech fields for oil fields and you've got an approximation of Google's potential problem. Many routine parts of the company's growth, like buying small companies to stake out a position in search-related fields, could potentially be construed as anticompetitive if they are already deemed to have market dominance.

"I think they're going to have trouble with damn near any acquisition, including acquiring your local drycleaner," Reback gleefully says.

But there's no reason to think antitrust scrutiny would be restricted to the fringes of the company's expansion, and such scrutiny could be more burdensome to Google than most. In the months before Google's initial public offering, the company issued a letter to prospective shareholders in which it explained that it did not intend to be a "conventional" company. Its leaders reserved the right to place strange, unprofitable bets on new technology and admitted reluctance to letting anyone look over the company's shoulder.

"As a public company, we will of course provide you with all information required by law, and we will also do our best to explain our actions. But we will not unnecessarily disclose all of our strengths, strategies and intentions," the founders wrote.