A federal judge’s ruling yesterday in the government’s antitrust lawsuit against Google reminds us of the old saw that growing old isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.

That was apparently the attitude of investors as Google’s stock rallied yesterday on the news that the courts won’t order the popular Google Chrome web browser to be divested from the company. Headlines like this one ran everywhere:

But wait a minute.

Judge Amit Mehta’s verdict against Google will require the world’s premier search engine company to “share” its search data with rivals “to give competitors a shot at building the scale they need to offer better search results.” as the Wall Street Journal put it.

The Judge’s 200+ page kindergarten-logic can be synthesized in one sentence: you built it. Now you have to share it with the rest of the world. It’s only fair.

What’s next: a requirement that Popeyes “share” its secret fried chicken recipe with KFC and Bojangles?

These kinds of rulings have massive disincentive effects on innovation and invention.  They punish success and profitability in this “everyone gets a trophy” world we live in.  We now have a government that gives $10 billion taxpayer money to a loser like Intel and the next day trashes Google for making more than $1 trillion for American shareholders  – the scoundrels!

This absurd case has had Google locked up in court for nearly a decade.  Can you imagine the dead-weight loss of the legal bills imposed on Google and taxpayers for this judicial witch hunt?  Ironically, this latest ruling comes just a week after President Trump issued a social media message urging that we must do everything we can as a nation to preserve America’s tech supremacy and “our great tech companies.”

The only real winner here in this lawsuit debacle (other than the attorneys) is China, whose political leaders aspire to cripple Google, but the government lawyers here in the U.S. are doing their job for them.