Google questions whether DOJ's new top antitrust official Jonathan Kanter can be impartial, citing his work with Yelp and the News Media Alliance
David McCabe / New York Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
Jonathan Kanter arrived at the DOJ as a known quantity: the nominee profiles flagged him as a star corporate lawyer who had worked on anti-Google cases while representing Microsoft and others. Within weeks of taking office, Google escalated that résumé into a formal impartiality challenge, pointing to his paid work for Yelp and the News Media Alliance — two of the search giant's most vocal critics.
The recusal question became the defining constraint of his tenure: by mid-2022 he was barred from Google cases while the DOJ debated whether he must step back entirely, before being cleared to oversee Google probes in early 2023.
First-order effects
- Google's challenge forces the DOJ to resolve Kanter's recusal status before he can personally direct any Google investigation, sidelining the division's new chief from its highest-profile target at the outset.
- Yelp and the News Media Alliance's past engagements with Kanter are converted from routine client work into evidence in an impartiality dispute, putting both organizations' advocacy relationships under public scrutiny.
Second-order effects
- Google demonstrates a repeatable playbook — targeting an enforcer's client history rather than the case itself — that other regulated platforms can copy when facing aggressive antitrust leadership.
- If recusal sticks, DOJ career staff carry the Google cases without political-direction cover, shifting weight onto lower-level officials and slowing decision-making at the top of the division.
Third-order effects
- Conflict-of-interest vetting becomes a structural gate on who can hold the antitrust chief job at all, narrowing the candidate pool to people without prior tech-industry clients — or leaving the post hobbled by standing recusals.
- A judge later declined to order Kanter's recusal from the ad antitrust suit, suggesting the litigation track may absorb these challenges even where administrative clearance wavers — a split between court rulings and internal ethics rules that shapes future enforcement.
The trend: Big Tech is increasingly contesting antitrust enforcement by attacking enforcers' credentials and seeking recusals, making conflict-of-interest adjudication a core battleground alongside the cases themselves.