The US government has long had the nation’s biggest tech giants in its sights, and in 2024 it hit the bull’s eye.
The big one victory in August, when the Justice Department convinced a federal district court judge that Google (GOOG, GOOGLE:) had abused its search engine dominance and violated antitrust law.
“Google is a monopoly, and it has acted as one to preserve its monopoly,” the judge wrote in his book. ruler.
It was the government’s most high-profile antitrust victory against a major company since prosecutors went after AT&T in the 1980s and Microsoft in the 1990s.
Prosecutors then asked the same judge to force Google parent Alphabet to sell off parts of its empire, a dramatic request that will be made in a separate trial in 2025. The end result could be the dismantling of the glittering empire built up in Silicon Valley for more than two decades.
What happened in 2024 could have future implications for some other big names in the tech world.
Apple (AAPL:), Amazon (AMZN:), and Meta (AFTER:) are all defending against a number of other federal and state antitrust suits, some of which make similar claims.
So far, Wall Street doesn’t seem fazed.Stocks of the world’s biggest tech companies, the so-called Magnificent Seven, helped lift the market in 2024, thanks in part to advances around artificial intelligence.
These include Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia (NVDA:), Tesla (TSLA:), and the Alphabet. Alphabet actually hit an all-time record this month.
Some legal experts argue that the government’s antitrust gains in 2024 are still too early to seriously shake up the tech giants.
“The Biden administration has moved antitrust law in some ways,” said the University of Tennessee law professor. Maurice Stack. “But we’re in the end zone, aren’t we?”
Cases alleging that companies acted illegally to maintain a monopoly take years to work their way through the justice system.The more immediate danger for the tech giants, Stacke said, is the possibility that the government will try to block the new proposal. mergers or that their business could be eclipsed by AI startups.
“It gives them more chills than any regulator,” Stack said. “They don’t want to be next Intel:“.
Amy Boss, director of state and federal affairs for technology at NetChoice (which also represents Yahoo Finance), agreed that government merger challenges pose the most looming threats.
“It’s showing in the boardroom,” he said. “I think there’s an increased reluctance on the part of companies to merge, to grow their businesses, because they may be subject to increased scrutiny.”
Could that change when President-elect Donald Trump takes office?
There is uncertainty about that issue. Trump has finally made it clear that he does not intend to ease the country’s technological giants. when he returns to the Oval Office.
“Big tech has been rampant for years,” Trump said after nominating Gale Slater, an aide to Vice President-elect JD Vance, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
The industry, he added, “stifles competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, is using its market power to suppress the rights of so many Americans as well as Little Tech.”
“I was proud to fight these abuses in my first term, and our Justice Department’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gale’s leadership,” he added.
It was the first Trump administration to initially sue Google over antitrust concerns, leading to a district court judge’s ruling in August that the tech giant illegally monopolized the market of search engines.
It was during the first Trump administration that the Federal Trade Commission sought to do this to discharge Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in a case to be heard in April.
The first Trump administration also launched an antitrust investigation into Apple (APPL:The Biden administration sued the iPhone maker earlier this year.
On November 19, US President-elect Donald Trump talks with Brendan Carr, who was planned by him to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. ·via REUTERS / Reuters
Just days before taking office, Carr sent letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook, predicting “sweeping action to restore Americans first amendment rights” when Trump takes office. .
Many of these CEOs have spent time since Trump’s election trying to curry favor with the president-elect, meeting him in person at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort or donating large sums of money to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Trump has sent some mixed messages about how far he’s willing to go to hold tech companies accountable.
Asked on the campaign trail whether he supported breaking up Google as an antidote to unhealthy competition in the search engine market, Trump suggested that Google’s punishment could be met without forcing it to sell off parts of its empire.
“What you can do without taking it apart is make sure it’s fairer,” Trump said in an interview on Oct. 15. The former president called Google’s search engine “rigged” and expressed concern that the implications of the case for Google could favor China.
Google CEO Pichai said of Trump that “in my conversations with him, he’s definitely focused on American competitiveness, particularly technology, including artificial intelligence.”
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit on Dec. 4. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) ·Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images
Asked at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York whether Trump’s election changes the dynamics of Google’s antitrust case, he said: .
“So I don’t have any particular idea about it,” he added, “and it will protect us there.”
Stack, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, predicted that antitrust enforcement would continue to be much more aggressive than under the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
“While the antitrust system under Trump may not be the same as it was under Biden, it will not go back to the way it was.”
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance.Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed:.
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