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WASHINGTON
The American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement in response to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, which indicates the Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Google:
"An antitrust case against Google is long overdue," said Economic Liberties Executive Director Sarah Miller. "We hope that state attorneys general and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division address the long-standing monopoly power of Google, which has more than 90% of the mobile search market and, alongside Facebook, dominates digital advertising."
Economic Liberties' Sarah Miller, Matt Stoller, and Zephyr Teachout recently published "Addressing Facebook and Google's Harms Through a Regulated Competition Approach," a new paper that explains how Facebook and Google developed business models toxic to democracy, civil rights, and public health, and breaks down a series of solutions to rein in big tech.
A list of Google's publicly-disclosed acquisitions through 2019 is below.
- February 2001: Deja
- September 2001: Outride
- February 2003: Pyra Labs
- April 2003: Neotonic Software, Applied Semantics and Kaltix
- October 2003: Sprinks and Genius Labs
- May 2004: Ignite Logic
- July 2004: Picasa
- September 2004: ZipDash
- October 2004: Where 2 Technologies and Keyhole
- March 2005: Urchin Software Corp
- May 2005: Dodgeball
- July 2005: Reqwireless
- August 2005: Android
- November 2005: Skia and Akwan Information Technologies
- December 2005: Phatbits, allPAY GmbH and bruNET GmbH
- January 2006: dMarc Broadcasting
- February 2006: Measure Map
- March 2006: Upstartle and "@" Last Software
- April 2006: Orion
- June 2006: 2Web Technologies
- August 2006: Neven Vision and Youtube
- October 2006: JotSpot
- December 2006: Endoxon
- February 2007: AdScape
- March 2007: Trendalyzer
- April 2007: DoubleClick, Tonic Systems and Marratech video conference software
- May 2007: GreenBorder and Panoramio
- June 2007: FeedBurner, PeaksStream, Zenter and GrandCentral
- July 2007: Postini and ImageAmerica
- September 2007: Zingku
- October 2007: Jaiku
- July 2008: Begun and Omnisio
- September 2008: TNC
- August 2009: On2, reCAPTCHA and Eluceon Research
- November 2009: AdMob, Gizmo5, Teracent and AppJet
- February 2010: Aardvark
- February 2010: reMail
- March 2010: Picnik, DocVerse and Episodic
- April 2010: PinkArt, Agnilux, LabPixies and BumpTop
- May 2010: Global IP Solutions, Simplify Media, Ruba.com, Invite Media and Instantiations
- July 2010: Metaweb
- August 2010: Slide.com, Jambool, Like.com, Angstro and SocialDeck
- September 2010: Plannr, Quiksee and MentorWave Technologies
- October 2010: BlindType
- December 2010: Phonetic Arts, Widevine Technologies and Zetawire
- January 2011: eBook Technologies, SayNow and Motorola Mobility (SOLD 2013)
- March 2011: BeatThatQuote.com, Next New Networks, Green Parrot Pictures, Zynamics
- April 2011: PushLife, ITA Software and TalkBin
- May 2011: 510 Systems, Anthony Robots, Modu and Sparkbuy
- June 2011: PostRank, Admeld, and Sage TV
- July 2011: Punchd, Fridge, PittPatt
- August 2011: Dealmap
- September 2011: Zave Networks, Zagat, DailyDeal
- October 2011: SocialGrapple
- November 2011: Apture and Katango
- December 2011: RightsFlow and Clever Sense
- March 2012: Milk
- April 2012: TxVia
- June 2012: Meebo and Quickoffice
- July 2012: Sparrow, Wildfire Interactive and Cuban Council
- September 2012: VirusTotal.com and Nik Software
- November 2012: Incentive Targeting and Bufferbox
- January 2013: Schaft, Industrial Preception, Redwood Robotics, Meka Robotics, Holomni, Bot & Dolly, and Autofuss
- March 2013: Channel Intelligence, DNNresearch, and Talaria Technologies
- April 2013: Behavio and Wavii
- May 2013: Makani Power and MyEnergy (SHUT DOWN)
- June 2013: Waze
- August 2013: WIMM Labs
- September 2013: Calico, and Bump
- October 2013: Flutter and FlexyCore
- January 2014: Bitspin, Imprermium and DeepMind Technologies
- February 2014: Nest, SlickLogin, spider.io
- March 2014: GreenThrottle
- April 2014: Titan Aerospace
- May 2014: Rangespan, Adometry, Appetas, Stackdriver, Quest Visual, and Divide
- June 2014: mDialog, Aplental Technologies, Baarzo, and Appurify
- July 2014: Dropcam, Songza and drawElements
- August 2014: Skybox Imaging, Emu, Directr, Jetpac, Gecko Design, and Zync Render
- September 2014: Lift Labs, Polar and Input Factory
- October 2014: Agawi, Firebase, Dark Blue Labs, Vision Factory and Revolv
- November 2014: Lumedyne Technologies and RelativeWave
- December 2014: Vidmaker
- January 2015: Granata Decision Systems
- February 2015: Launchpad Toys, Odysee, Softcard and Red Hot Labs
- April 2015: Thrive Audio and Skillman & Hackett
- May 2015: Timeful and Pulse.io
- July 2015: Pixate
- September 2015: Oyster and Jibe Mobile
- October 2015: Digisfera
- November 2015: Fly Labs and Bebop
- February 2016: BandPage and Pie
- May 2016: Synergyse
- June 2016: Webpass
- July 2016: Moodstocks, Anvato, Kifi and LaunchKit
- August 2016: Orbitera and Apportable
- September 2016: Urban Engines and Api.ai
- October 2016: Apigee, FameBit and Eyefluence
- November 2016: LeapDroid and Qwiklabs
- December 2016: Cronologics
- January 2017: Crashlytics and Fabric
- March 2017: Kaggle and AppBridge
- May 2017: Owlchemy Labs
- July 2017: Halli Labs
- August 2017: AIMatter and Senosis
- September 2017: Bitium
- October 2017: Relay Media and 60db
- November 2017: Banter
- January 2018: Limes Audio AND htc cORPORATION
- February 2018: Xively
- March 2018: Lytro Tenor
- May 2018: Velostrata and Cask
- August 2018: GraphicsFuzz
- October 2018: Onward
- November 2018: Workbench and rEDUX
- December 2018: Where is My Train and Sigmoid Labs
- January 2019: Superpod
- February 2019: Alooma
- March 2019: Nightcorn
- June 2019: Looker
- July 2019: Elastifile
- October 2019: Socratic
- December 2019: Typhoon Studios
Learn more about Economic Liberties here.
LATEST NEWS
Over 700,000 Poor Kids Across 12 States Have Lost Food Aid Under Trump-GOP Budget Law
A new analysis warns that large-scale loss of food assistance is "jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society."
May 27, 2026
The budget package that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans rammed through last summer has already spurred large-scale loss of nutrition assistance among low-income children, with an analysis released Wednesday estimating that more than 700,000 kids across a dozen states have lost federal food aid since the GOP law took effect.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a liberal think tank, found that the "sharp participation declines" among children likely stem from provisions of the Republican law that—for the first time in the program's history—shift large Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit costs onto states. The law also expands punitive SNAP work requirements.
The new analysis notes that children account for "nearly half of the 1.6-million-person decline" in SNAP enrollment since last July among people of all ages in the 12 states with data available.
"The new law’s cost shift has led states to take steps that are making it harder for eligible people to receive SNAP, including families with children," CBPP explained. "Losing SNAP also makes it harder for low-income children to qualify for other food assistance, such as WIC and free school meals—jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society."
Republican lawmakers repeatedly denied that their legislation would strip food aid from needy children, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) saying the package was laser-focused on "fraud, waste, and abuse."
"We are not cutting SNAP," Johnson falsely claimed in May 2025, just over a month before Trump signed the Republican legislation into law. The package will cut $186 billion from SNAP over the next decade and strip food aid from millions of low-income people, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at CBPP, emphasized that the SNAP cuts triggered by the Republican law have not "fully taken effect," meaning recent benefit losses among families across the country are just the start unless Congress moves quickly to avert disaster.
"Congress must act before even more eligible low-income families—including families with children—lose the food assistance they need to afford groceries, starting by delaying this SNAP cost shift for all states," Bergh wrote on social media.
The Trump-GOP cuts to SNAP, combined with rising grocery costs stemming in large part from the president's tariffs and war of choice against Iran, have resulted in surging food bank demand across the country.
"We’ve been going to food banks every week,” a single mom in Arizona whose SNAP benefits were recently cut off told NBC News. “We’re eating less, we’re eating more frozen stuff.”
Far from reversing course on their assault on federal nutrition assistance, Republicans and the Trump administration are doubling down, pursuing massive cuts to fruit and vegetable benefits for low-income mothers. CBPP has projected that roughly 5.4 million people would lose fruit and vegetable aid if Republicans' newly proposed cuts become law.
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Food Prices Set for Summer Surge as Trump and GOP Stare Down Inflation ‘Abyss’
"Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it," said one expert.
May 27, 2026
US shoppers have been struggling with the price of groceries for years now, and prices are only set to climb higher in the coming months.
As reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, a combination of President Donald Trump's tariffs, his illegal war with Iran, and a potential "super El Niño" weather pattern is projected to lower food supply while increasing food production costs, all of which will mean higher prices at US grocery stores.
According to Bloomberg, weather forecasters are now projecting that an unusually strong El Niño will form in August "that will persist into 2027 and push global average temperatures higher," potentially causing droughts in nations that grow staple crops such as rice, coffee, and cocoa.
And even without an El Niño, noted Bloomberg, farmers in the US have already endured the warmest-ever start to a planting season, which "prompted some domestic crops to begin blossoming weeks ahead of schedule instead of remaining dormant throughout the winter, leaving them exposed to subsequent frosts."
Ricky Volpe, agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University, told Bloomberg that 2026 would be a "challenging year" for agriculture, warning that "food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it."
Unusually warm weather isn't the only factor pushing up food prices. In a report published earlier this month, The New York Times found that Trump's tariffs on foreign steel have been pushing up prices of canned foods.
According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the price of canned fruit and vegetables in March posted 5.7% increase from the year before, driven in large part by a tariff-induced rise in tin plate prices.
"Over 80% of the tin plate used in the United States last year was imported, according to Harbor Intelligence, a metals markets analysis firm," noted the Times. "Tin plate is produced in much lower volumes than the steel used to make cars and buildings, making it a less attractive business for large steel companies."
While Trump has tried to brush off the rise in grocery and fuel prices in recent weeks—going so far as to say "I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation"—his Republican Party is bracing for potential political consequences.
CNBC reported on Wednesday that the GOP is staring down an inflation "abyss" and fears that Democrats are well poised to at least retake the US House of Representatives.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is retiring at the end of this term, told CNBC that his fellow Republicans have been unwilling to serve as a check on what he described as Trump's self-destructive tariffs that had hit Americans' pocketbooks.
"I think tariffs are bad policy," said Bacon. "Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, they’re the bibles of conservatism, and we have violated those... We should not have rolled over on that here in Congress."
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'A Dramatic Abdication': Trump Admin to Send US Citizens With Ebola Exposure to Kenya
The administration is currently setting up a facility in Kenya where US citizens will be not only monitored, but also treated, for Ebola in a major departure from previous responses.
May 27, 2026
In what one emergency physician and public health expert called “a dramatic abdication of what we owe our own,” the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to send Americans with suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola to a facility in Kenya, instead of repatriating them and treating them in the state-of-the-art quarantine and treatment facilities the US has for dangerous diseases that pose a threat to public health.
The facility is currently being set up, The New York Times reported, and several dozen Public Health Service officers—whose agency operates under the Department of Defense—are training to deploy to Kenya. The PHS also deployed to Liberia during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
"This is unbelievable and infuriating," said Dr. Craig Spencer, a professor of public health at Brown University.
According to the Times, the PHS officers in Kenya were initially going to monitor any Americans, such as healthcare workers who have gone to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to help contain the outbreak that was declared a public health emergency of international concern earlier this month. Those who showed symptoms would be transferred to European hospitals; at least seven Americans have been sent to facilities in Germany and the Czech Republic in recent weeks.
But two people familiar with the plans told the Times that the administration now plans to see to the patients' treatment in the Kanya facility as well.
"When Americans will need us most—especially those who go abroad to help end this outbreak at its source—the US government plans to send them to a hospital it is standing up from scratch in Kenya," wrote Spencer on Substack on Tuesday. "I find it incredibly difficult to believe that we can stand up a facility in the next few weeks—or even months—with the staff, the supplies, and the experience we’ve built over the past decade in more than a dozen hospitals across the US."
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, who helped treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone in 2014, said the plan does not make sense "from a preparedness, operational, or ethical standpoint."
"How are public health officers going to take care of persons who get sick?" said Kuppalli. "These are not persons who have experience in providing high levels of care for persons with this infection. Also, why would a PHS officer deploy knowing if they had an exposure that they wouldn’t be repatriated?"
Spencer raised concerns that the plan "could push people to hide potential exposures, or incentivize individuals or organizations to downplay those exposures. If you know that any 'high-risk' exposure will get you shipped to Kenya instead of sent home, it’s not hard to imagine people not being fully forthcoming about what may have happened to them. That is exactly backwards from how you contain a disease."
"This will also discourage Americans from joining as part of the response," he wrote. "I know of multiple healthcare providers who are considering deploying with humanitarian organizations, and we need a cavalry to help support the on-the-ground response if we have any hope of ending this outbreak. But programs and policies like this are exactly the reasons people will hesitate to sign up."
Spencer, who contracted Ebola after deploying to West Africa in 2014 and was quarantined and treated at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, emphasized that the strain of Ebola that began spreading in Ituri Province, DRC and is confirmed to have spread to Uganda does not have an approved treatment or vaccine.
"Survival depends heavily on the quality of the system and the people around you," wrote Spencer. "We have that system—I survived Ebola and am here today partly because of it—but we are choosing not to use it."
The news of the plan to send infected Americans to Kenya comes as suspected cases have ballooned to at least 906, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) latest Weekly External Situation Report, released on Sunday. The report said there have been 223 suspected deaths from the current Ebola strain, which is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, as opposed to the Zaire strain, for which a vaccine and treatments have been approved. More than 100 cases and 10 deaths have been confirmed in DRC, while seven cases and one death have been confirmed in Uganda.
The report emphasized that following up with contacts of people who have developed Ebola symptoms is a "major challenge," with just 19.3% of contacts seen by health professionals within the previous 24 hours as of May 23.
"Constraints include insecurity, movement restrictions, highly mobile populations linked to mining communities, and
difficulties tracing contacts across dispersed and cross-border populations, as well as limited trained contact tracers to
date," reads the report.
Low levels of trust in the affected communities—a major impediment to an effective response—also appear to be raising the risk of transmission. As Reuters reported on Monday, at least three attacks on Ebola treatment facilities in the northeastern DRC have caused dozens of patients to flee the hospitals.
"The attackers are reportedly motivated by a desire for the hospitals to release the bodies of deceased Ebola patients for burial—unsafe given that the virus remains transmissible after death—or by suspicion or doubt about the virus," reported Reuters.
Dr. Richard Lokudu, medical director of the Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital in Ituri, told Reuters that "there is denial of the disease within the population."
While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio blamed WHO for being "a little late" to identify that outbreak, public health experts have pointed to the Trump administration's massive cuts to foreign assistance and global public health initiatives, including the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as a major factor that likely allowed cases to spread for an extended period of time before international officials realized the outbreak was occurring.
As Common Dreams reported last week, USAID's Ebola prevention work was largely halted by the Department of Government Efficiency, run last year by tech billionaire Elon Musk—despite Musk's insistence that funding for Ebola efforts was maintained. USAID had more than 50 staffers dedicated to responding to and preparing for disease outbreaks like Ebola and Marburg virus, but DOGE's cuts reduced the workforce to about six people.
With Rubio insisting that "we can’t have Ebola cases" in the US and that keeping the disease out of US borders is the top priority for the country, the administration has invoked Title 42 to keep travelers from the DRC, Uganda, and neighboring South Sudan from entering the US if they were in any of the three countries in the previous 21 days. WHO has warned that travel bans and restrictions are not based in science.
Cuts at the CDC have also led the agency to put out a call to its workforce, seeking volunteers to conduct public health screenings at airports.
The State Department said last week it had mobilized about $23 million to help the DRC and Uganda respond to the outbreak and is "mobilizing CDC staff and resources."
But Spencer said Sunday that the administration's travel bans and focus on keeping those affected by Ebola out of US borders are "a policy you put in place when you have nothing else meaningful to add. It gives the appearance of doing ‘something’ while effectively doing nothing of value at all. And it takes away attention from where the real problem is."
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