1956 Consent Decree https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/how_antitrust...
In both, ATT essentially traded government blessing of monopoly in core markets (long distance telecommunications) for agreeing not to expand into other markets (e.g. Western Union money transfers and telecom equipment).
And side point, ATT R&D (~1910 to 1925, later named Bell Labs) was originally funded after the company almost imploded due to short-sighted profit maximization at the expense of customer satisfaction / service quality.
I think it's interesting to imagine what a Google-thats-only-search or a Meta-thats-only-social look like, similarly plowing their profits into independent research labs, but without funneling them throughout the for-profit octopus conglomerates they are now.
What has changed since then are the legal theories of when and how to apply antitrust regulations. The law as written has not changed, but the way it's enforced (or not) certainly has.
You seem to be implying complete independence between something being the results of antitrust regulations, the results of the enforcement of antitrust regulations, or the consequences of theories of how when to enforce antitrust regulations. For people who speculate that these three things might be related to each other, your argument will not work.
I get the impression Google has no intent to give things away for free anymore lol
I'm not a Googler but there's no denying that, despite all their faults, Google has contributed a lot.
Regulation creates a problem and then creates a solution, skimming off the top every time.
The idea that businesses have to be super swell people is what should be removed. Businesses doing things for money is good. Just as employees don't work for them because they're super swell people. You just shouldn't be thinking this way.
They give away Chrome for spreading it and giving them control over web standards.
AT&T gives UNIX away as they have no revenue stream on top of it and it being research.
Google isn't giving out their research work.