Thanks, I didn’t subscribe to WSJ so I couldn’t read the full article. If you did maybe you can fill in the gaps.
From the first two paragraphs it appears an investigation will ensue, but that doesn’t mean any charges will come out.
I know I keep poking at what ‘law’ is being broken. The article would seem to speak to anti-trust, and that may be the way to break up google. But I still don’t see a specific remedy in law for exercising first amendment ‘speech’. This may be a case where new law is required because the old campaign finance law has not kept up with the technology of the day? Again, I don’t know.
If Google had said to any particular parties campaign, “hey we will give you free advertising in the form of ads, editorials, etc” then I can see that needing to be reported. But if Google exercises its 1st amendment right to simply support/endorse a campaign or disparage another, I’m not sure how you define when it crosses the line between 1st amendment and violation of campaign finance law.
I think if the goal is to stop Google from vote “manipulation”, you either have to attack them on the anti-trust principles that they are a monopoly on search engines from a business perspective, or you may need new campaign finance law (good luck with that given the current congress).