From an economic perspective they are quite comparable. However, the complaint isn't asserting that such marketing practices are inherently illegal or harmful

From an economic perspective they are quite comparable. However, the complaint isn't asserting that such marketing practices are inherently illegal or harmful to a competitive marketplace. The accusation is that google abused its market dominance to render any competition virtually impossible, or at least fiscally unfeasible. If the market for search engines that also control the end-to-end ad/marketing space like Google does were genuinely competitive, this practice wouldn't be illegal according to the DOJ. Even if a company as unethical, obtrusive, innovative, and effective as Google existed and wanted to compete in this field, thered be almost no way of breaking into the market. That also explains why the charges are happening now instead of when they began this practice in the early 2000's, to answer the defense's question asked regarding why this happening now after all this time. IMO, the most telling and head-scratching detail is Google's claim that they face competition in the search engine marketplace with the likes of Amazon, GitHub, tik tok, meta and even Expedia? All because people don't have to use Google to access those products. It's ridiculous to claim just because you have information and a search function, it's somehow a competitor to Google. Feels insulting they claim all of those entirely different products, which don't seek to index the web and provide general search capabilities, qualify as competitors.