3 Major Antitrust Lawsuits Seeking to Break Up Big Tech's Power
In a pair of rapidly developing stories, Google and Facebook are facing significant bipartisan efforts in antitrust lawsuits against perceived monopolistic powers both companies have cultivated and their efforts to increase market share and power, according to both state, federal, and even supranational officials such as the European Union. The antitrust lawsuits are seemingly forcing drastically different political organizations, even after the contests to the election of President-elect Joseph Biden. Plus, international growth in reform movements, particularly in the EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act, are showing that Big Tech is facing trouble throughout this decade in light of the concentration of Big Tech’s socioeconomic power and political impact.
Table of Contents
- Google Antitrust Lawsuit Expands To Silicon Valley
- Zuckerberg Facing Antitrust Lawsuits Like Rockerfeller
- Apple and EU Join In Through Facebook Drama
Google Antitrust Lawsuit Expands To Silicon Valley
Off of our last story concerning the DOJ-led lawsuit against Google’s presumed monopoly back from October, the developments here are growing quickly. The attorney general of Alphabet’s – Google’s parent company – home state, California, joined back on December 11, with Michigan and Wisconsin joining six days later back last Thursday. This new total of 38 states and the Department of Justice is running with a wide array of political figures focusing on attempts to rein in Big Tech’s concentration in power throughout the last 25 years and the societal effects as well.
Zuckerberg Facing Antitrust Lawsuits Like Rockerfeller
Recently, efforts against Big Tech have launched a new litigation front against Facebook through the Federal Trade Commission over the company’s systematic collection of competitor sites throughout the early 2010s, including the billion-dollar purchase of Instagram back in 2012 and its purchase and integration of Whatsapp back in 2014 for $19 billion. This lawsuit was quickly joined by an astounding 46 states and the District of Columbia and even the territory of Guam , reinforcing the bipartisanship set by the “robber barons” of this decade in general.
In addition to both companies facing separate challenges by federal agencies, a new Texas-led antitrust lawsuit effort alleges the existence of collusion between Google and Facebook to benefit each other’s advertising divisions, from an alleged 2018 agreement where Facebook allowed its advertisers to use Google’s services in exchange for Google allowing specialized benefits for advertisers from Facebook after a controversy concerning the practice of “header bidding”, where advertisers could bid repeatedly on whatever platform was used. This would be clearly against the first section of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, forbidding conspiracy to dominate a market through unfair competition practices as well as individual monopolies.
Apple and EU Join In Through Facebook Drama
From a separate disagreement between Apple and Facebook concerning the former’s increased data privacy focuses affecting the performance of personal advertising on the latter, Facebook issued numerous full-page ads on papers such as the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal attacking Apple on the premise that new iOS ad tracker restrictions “will be devastating to small businesses” . The protests by Facebook mirror that of the Apple antitrust lawsuit concerning the controversy of Epic Games’ own challenge to Apple’s control over the App Store and the impact of unfair in-app purchasing regulations.
