Apparently the department is short of a bob or two after the collapse of President Joe Biden's social spending bill.

DOJ antitrust prosecutors had earlier aimed to wrap up their probes of the two tech giants by Dec. 31, culminating years of scrutiny by the department into Apple's App Store and Google's command of the online ad market.

The decision on going to court is likely to come in March or later because of continued discussions about where to file and who will make the call.

Another major concern for the department is the likely expense of a court battle with the two companies, each of which has a market value exceeding $1 trillion.

In this case Apple and Google had a friend in Democrat Senator Joe Manchin who killed off his own party’s Build Back Better package, which would have given DOJ a $500 million boost for antitrust enforcement. Of course, the DOJ does not need that sort of thing.