The final phase of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) lawsuit against Google is underway, and a federal judge may force Google to make major changes to its online search business. Unfortunately, no one seems to be thinking about how those changes would hurt small businesses like my family’s restaurant in southeast Ohio.

We opened our restaurant in 2009 so we could share traditional Italian foods–like handmade ricotta gnocchi made according to my nonna’s recipe–with our community. Sixteen years later, despite the industry’s tough odds and the challenging COVID years, our restaurant is thriving. We’ve expanded into catering and online food sales, and we’re still growing.

We’ve succeeded because we’re committed to offering delicious food at the right price — and because we use free and low-cost digital tools to find customers and tell them about our offerings.

That’s where changes to Google’s search business would run smack into our family’s restaurant. Here’s the situation. Last year, the same judge ruled that Google’s contracts with various phone makers violated federal antitrust laws. The DOJ then asked the judge to institute various punishments, (known as “remedies”), including forcing the company to break apart many of its search-related tools. The intention is to strike a blow at Google. But the reality is that small businesses in small towns nationwide, including my family’s restaurant, use those services to find customers, grow, and succeed — so we’re the ones who would take the hit.

Every time someone uses Google to search for restaurants in our area, we get a valuable opportunity to market ourselves for free on sites like Facebook, Yelp, or TripAdvisor. In addition, our Google Business Profile, which pops up when customers search for us by name, gives customers important information, like our hours, reviews, our website link, and a map to our restaurant. For a family-owned restaurant with limited funds, those are important free marketing tools that help us compete with chain restaurants.

We also purchase search-related services from Google that help us find new customers. For example, we pay to ensure our restaurant pops up near the top of the results page when people search for Italian food in Steubenville. In addition, we buy ads that are sent to people who’ve been searching online for a restaurant like ours. When we do those things, we get data showing us how people arrived at our website — whether by searching for us by name, or through an ad, email link, or social media. That helps us understand where to focus our marketing efforts, which helps us find customers and get the best return on our advertising investment.

Google’s search tools were a huge help for us during the pandemic, when the restaurant industry struggled. By combining free social media marketing with Google’s search, advertising, and analytics tools, we pivoted our operations to meet people’s needs, and we emerged from the pandemic stronger than ever.

Unfortunately, Ohio businesses — including restaurants — are once again facing extreme economic uncertainty, as costs rise, tariffs threaten our local economy, and a recession becomes increasingly likely. We’ll need every tool available to keep costs down and adapt to meet customers’ needs and budgets. The last thing we need is for our best advertising and marketing tools to become more expensive and less effective — or disappear entirely.

I’m no legal expert. But I think if the DOJ doesn’t like the way Google makes contracts, it should ask the judge to make Google fix the way it makes contracts — not to break the tools that help millions of small businesses thrive. As the judge considers Google’s future, I urge him to remember the far-reaching impacts of his decisions.

(Frankie DiCarlantonio is the CEO of Scaffidi Restaurant Group in Steubenville, Ohio.)