Klobuchar, Schmitt Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Protect Americans from Anticompetitive Tactics Monopolizing the Online Search Market

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Eric Schmitt (R-MO) introduced the bipartisan Securing Enforcement of Americans' Right to Competition at Home (SEARCH) Act to prevent dominant search engines from blocking smaller competitors and preferencing their search products in other lines of business. The bipartisan legislation would put into law many of the remedies sought by the Justice Department after it won its case against Google for illegally maintaining a monopoly in online search.

"Through three administrations, the Justice Department has proven in court that Google has stifled competition and created barriers to user choice," Klobuchar said. "Upstart search engines should be able to compete and innovate, bringing new tools to consumers. That's why Congress should put the guardrails in place that both the Biden and Trump Administrations have said are necessary to bring competition to online search."

"Big Tech monopolies are shaping what information Americans see and censoring free speech. A handful of search engines dictate how virtually every American accesses information, meaning the companies controlling those search engines hold massive power over what people see online and control the most basic infrastructure of human speech and freedom of information in the digital sphere," Schmitt said. "That is unacceptable. As Missouri's Attorney General, I sued Google over its illegal online search monopoly and its efforts to crush competitors, as well as fought Big Tech companies' collusion with left-wing organizations and the administrative state that censored conservatives. Now, I am proud to work with Senator Klobuchar to offer a bipartisan path to protect one of the key tenets of modern American society: free speech online."

The SEARCH Act would ban dominant search engines from blocking smaller competitors by paying distributors to make them users' default choice, a practice federal courts have found violates antitrust laws by illegally maintaining a monopoly. The legislation would also require dominant search engines to share data and syndicate search results to foster competition in a market that has had little for decades, and require search access points to offer users choice screens so users can easily find and switch to alternative search engines.

The SEARCH Act is enforceable by antitrust enforcers at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission or state attorneys general.

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