Antitrust

Antitrust Follow Follow How big is too big? And when does a company become so big that the government is forced to step in and make it smaller? Politicians have been struggling with those questions for at least a hundred years. But as the latest generation of tech companies has taken shape, the questions are becoming more and more relevant to internet giants like Google and Facebook. There’s a new movement in Washington to break up those companies, whether through a Justice Department lawsuit or an old-school appeal to the Sherman Antitrust Act. It’s a struggle Microsoft fended off in the ‘90s, and it has only grown more urgent in the years since. As Amazon has taken a stranglehold of online retail, Jeff Bezos’ company has started to attract antitrust attention as well, with figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Lina Khan taking aim at Amazon’s cutthroat competitive strategies. If it succeeds, it would be one of the most ambitious government projects in a generation — but success is still a long way off. Top DOJ antitrust enforcer is out weeks before Live Nation trial Lauren Feiner Feb 12 D Dominic Preston Feb 9 Link EU tells Meta to let other AIs back on WhatsApp. The European Commission has weighed in on the November decision to block the likes of ChatGPT and Copilot from WhatsApp, and thinks it violates EU antitrust laws. It’s surprisingly fast for the organization, which called the issue “urgent” because of the risk of “irreparable” damage to competition in the nascent AI industry. Image: European Commission Why is the Trump administration really appealing its Meta loss? Lauren Feiner Feb 5 Epic and Google have a secret $800 million Unreal Engine and services deal Adi Robertson and Sean Hollister Jan 22 FTC says it will appeal Meta antitrust loss Lauren Feiner Jan 20 Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling Lauren Feiner Jan 16 The Atlantic, Penske, and Vox Media have all sued Google for antitrust violations Lauren Feiner Jan 14 Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards X’s deepfake porn feature clearly violates app store guidelines. Why won’t Apple and Google pull it? Elizabeth Lopatto Jan 9 L External Link Lauren Feiner Dec 23, 2025 Link Another landlord agrees to steer clear of algorithmic rent price recommendations. The Justice Department reached a proposed agreement with landlord LivCor to resolve claims that it illegally coordinated rent prices with other landlords using algorithmic recommendations from RealPage. The DOJ previously settled with RealPage , and two large landlords involved in the case. Justice Department Reaches Proposed Consent Decree with LivCor, One of America’s Largest Landlords, to Resolve Information Sharing and Algorithmic Coordination Claims [ Justice Department ] Tim Cook’s lobbying hangs over a key kids online safety vote Lauren Feiner Dec 11, 2025 Fortnite is back in Google’s Android app store Stevie Bonifield Dec 11, 2025 Google Zero is under investigation by the EU Jess Weatherbed Dec 9, 2025 DOJ settles with RealPage over its software’s alleged rent price fixing Emma Roth Nov 24, 2025 Judge wants to fix Google’s ad tech monopoly before it’s too late Lauren Feiner Nov 21, 2025 Meta is not a monopolist, judge rules Lauren Feiner Nov 18, 2025 Senate Democrats want to know: was YouTube’s Trump settlement a bribe? Adi Robertson Oct 15, 2025 Google fights to prevent search remedies from inhibiting its AI ambitions Lauren Feiner Oct 9, 2025 The Supreme Court didn’t save Google from Epic, and now the clock is ticking Sean Hollister Oct 6, 2025 The judge tasked with deciding Google’s fate would rather not Lauren Feiner Oct 6, 2025 US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial Verge Staff Jan 14 L The Verge Lauren Feiner Oct 6, 2025 Link The Google ad tech case is the kind that “ought to settle,” judge says. Google and the DOJ just wrapped their two-week remedies trial until closing arguments on November 17th. Judge Leonie Brinkema is still holding out hope for a settlement to avoid the tricky technical issues of a court-ordered remedy. US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial L Lauren Feiner Oct 6, 2025 Link Who will monitor the Google’s compliance? That’s what Brinkema wanted to know as the case wound down. She wants the parties to consider what kind of committee should be appointed by the court. “That is part of the key of making whatever the final remedy is work,” she said. “I would be very concerned about any monitor who might have any stake in the outcome.” L Lauren Feiner Oct 6, 2025 Link Google’s technical expert warns DOJ’s proposals create a “huge issue.” Google brought back its technical expert Jason Nieh for a brief response to the DOJ’s rebuttal. Nieh claimed that Wheatland’s conception of how the open-sourced final auction logic would work was new and not technically feasible. Brinkema pushed back, saying that her understanding was that all that functionality is “already there” inside DFP and “all they want you to do basically is open the box.” Nieh said that wouldn’t work since the code is always evolving and it would be harder to stick back together with Google’s system. L Lauren Feiner Oct 6, 2025 Link Daily Mail executive warns of a “drag” on Google competitors without a break up. If the court only imposes behavioral restrictions on Google, Daily Mail Chief Digital Officer Matthew Wheatland warned in the DOJ’s rebuttal, there would still be a “gray area on our decision making process” to switch ad servers since they’d need to be sure the remedies would have “lasting effects” on Google’s actions. Breaking up (Google) is hard to do A court-ordered sale of Google’s ad tech tools could backfire on publishers, the company warned. Lauren Feiner Oct 4, 2025 L Lauren Feiner Oct 3, 2025 Link DOJ will continue its rebuttal on Monday. We heard more testimony from Google’s technical expert Jason Nieh this afternoon about why he thinks divesting AdX and DFP would be much harder than the DOJ’s experts said. On Monday, the DOJ will bring DailyMail.com chief digital officer Matthew Wheatland in to testify in its rebuttal case, and may add an expert or two. L Lauren Feiner Oct 3, 2025 Link Google’s anticompetitive behavior “was always a moving target.” Former News Corp ad tech executive Stephanie Layser worries that even if Brinkema limits Google’s bad conduct, it will simply find a new way to make things difficult for publishers in ways that will be hard to detect. Layser said she felt like a “conspiracy theorist” about her suspicions Google was harming her business — until discovery in this case. Google is destroying independent websites, and one sees no choice but to defend it anyway Lauren Feiner Oct 2, 2025 L Lauren Feiner Oct 2, 2025 Link Should remedies remove Google’s monopoly power? Google economic expert Andres Lerner testified that in the world that would have existed previously but for Google’s anticompetitive conduct, Google would still have monopoly power. Yet he generally agreed that remedies should unfetter the market from Google’s anticompetitive conduct. Brinkema said that seemed “inconsistent with the concept that some monopoly power can continue. There’s a tension there.” L Lauren Feiner Oct 2, 2025 Link Vibe coding won’t help move AdX from Google. Google security engineering VP Heather Adkins testified that while AI can help “autocomplete” some code that might be useful in a forced migration Google’s ad tools, vibe coding doesn’t produce secure enough code yet to make it so that a human doesn’t need to be looped into the process. L Lauren Feiner Oct 1, 2025 Link WikiHow CEO says Google’s ad tech helps it survive the “AI apocalypse” its search tools helped create. Elizabeth Douglas testified in Google’s defense that breaking up the ad tech tools her business relies on would introduce immense uncertainty in the one part of her business that feels relatively stable in terms of set up. But Google’s AI overviews, she said, are also part of the reason for WikiHow’s uncertain future, since they often keep users from clicking through to its pages. L Lauren Feiner Oct 1, 2025 Link AT&T’s breakup looms large. DOJ attorney David Geiger asked Goodwin about his claim that AT&T’s breakup slowed tech progress — was he also aware it accelerated the development of the cell phone? Goodwin said no, and Brinkema interjected, “yeah, but we lost Bell Labs. That’s what people comment on.” L Lauren Feiner Oct 1, 2025 Link Divestitures often fail, Google expert says. Former investment banker Shane Goodwin, who specialized in divestitures, gave several examples of such deals that later resulted in assets being sold back to the original firm, or didn’t achieve their goals. One example was the Sprint-T-Mobile merger that required a divestiture to Dish that was meant to result in a formidable 5G competitor . FTC accuses Zillow of paying $100 million to ‘dismantle’ Redfin Terrence O'Brien Oct 1, 2025 L Lauren Feiner Oct 1, 2025 Link Google defense continues on through the government shutdown. The company continues its defense today after Brinkema declined to pause the case amid the funding gap for the DOJ. L Lauren Feiner Sep 30, 2025 Link Judge points out the “two elephants in the room.” Brinkema says this includes the fact that the expected outcome of this trial is a court order that Google could be held in contempt of court over if it breaks, and a long list of other lawsuits it faces. Wouldn’t these things temper Google’s behavior? Goel says Google likely would comply with a court order, but the problem is that it’s nearly impossible to list all the ways Google might later figure out how to advantage itself again. L Lauren Feiner Sep 30, 2025 Link Rival ad exchange CEO doesn’t know if he’d buy AdX. PubMatic’s Goel said he didn’t have enough information about what a divested AdX would entail or how much it would cost to know if he would buy it. It’s a stark contrast from the search trial, where AI companies and rival search firms leapt at the chance to buy Chrome. L Lauren Feiner Sep 30, 2025 Link Is Google dragging its feet to fix a bug that hurts a rival? Rajeev Goel, CEO of rival ad exchange PubMatic, testified that he spoke to Google eight months ago about an issue where its advertiser tool wouldn’t buy some publisher inventory through PubMatic’s exchange. Goel said Google told him that was due to a bug they’re working to fix. Assuming that’s true, he said, Google still stands to make more money if it deprioritizes a fix. L Lauren Feiner Sep 30, 2025 Link A break up could plummet open web display advertising. Google executive Nirmal Jayaram, who previously worked on Google’s advertiser tools, warned that a divestiture would likely degrade products for advertisers, and lead more of them to move from open web display ads to other formats that give them a greater return on their investments. L Lauren Feiner Sep 30, 2025 Link “Going to the moon is simpler than going to Mars.” That’s how Google Ad Manager engineering director Glenn Berntson described the difference between a divestiture of AdX that excludes Google’s proprietary infrastructure versus one that includes it. Both are huge undertakings, he said. Most Popular Most Popular Why are Epstein’s emails full of equals signs? OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI The Pocket Taco is the best way to turn your phone into a Game Boy I hate my AI pet with every fiber of my being Anker’s USB-C cable that lets you charge two gadgets at once is 20 percent off Advertiser Content From This is the title for the native ad