In 2018, Jonathan Kanter appeared at a panel organized by one of his biggest clients, Yelp, to explain why antitrust enforcers weren’t being tough enough on Big Tech.

Seated next to Lina Khan, a progressive favorite who is now the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, Kanter accused Google of stifling smaller companies and squeezing them for advertising dollars. Those companies are wholly dependent on Google for their business and are forced to become Google advertisers out of fear of being demoted on Google’s platform, Kanter argued.