As an American who wishes his government protected him as well as the EU is protecting their citizens, I kinda resent being grouped in here.

Google fans would like to make this about US vs. the EU, because it misdirects away from Google's illegal actions. But multiple US companies asked for and supported this investigation against Google. And I wish our government laid down the same charges against them here.

My understanding is that the same anti-trust protections exist in the US, perhaps even stronger ones, but were not applied.

Is this just a case of lobbying corruption?

I summarized the bulk of the issue here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14644723

The FTC's staff have previously recommended filing charges against Google, and then the people up the ladder buried it.