The US government has long had the country’s largest tech giants in its sights, and in 2024, it hit its mark.
The big victory came in August, when the Justice Department convinced a federal district court judge that Google (GOOG, GOOGL) had abused its dominance in search engines and violated antitrust law.
“Google is a monopolist and has acted as such to maintain its monopoly,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
It was the government’s most resounding antitrust victory against any 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’s parent company, Alphabet, to sell off parts of its empire, a dramatic request that will play out in a separate phase of the trial in 2025. The end result could be the dismantling of a brilliant Silicon Valley empire amassed. more than two decades.
What happened in 2024 could have future implications for some of the other big names in the tech world.
Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) are defending themselves against a series of other federal and state-led antitrust lawsuits, some of which make similar claims.
For now, Wall Street doesn’t seem fazed. Shares of the so-called Magnificent Seven of the world’s largest technology companies helped push the market higher in 2024, thanks in part to advances around artificial intelligence.
They include Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), and Alphabet. Alphabet, in fact, hit an all-time high this month.
Some legal experts argue that the government’s antitrust developments in 2024 are still too premature to seriously shake up the giant tech companies.
“The Biden administration has made progress on antitrust in some ways,” said Maurice Stucke, a law professor at the University of Tennessee. “But are we in the end zone? No.”
Cases alleging that companies acted illegally to maintain a monopoly take years to make their way through the court system. The most current dangers for tech giants, Stucke said, are the chances that the government will try to block recently proposed mergers or that their businesses could be overshadowed by artificial intelligence startups.
“That gives them more chills than any regulator,” Stucke said. “They don’t want to be the next Intel.”
Amy Bos, director of state and federal affairs at tech sector advocate NetChoice (which also represents Yahoo Finance), agreed that government merger challenges pose the most imminent threats.
“It shows in the boardrooms,” he said. “I think companies are increasingly hesitant about whether to merge or grow their businesses, because they may be under greater scrutiny.”
Could that change once President-elect Donald Trump takes office?
There is uncertainty around that question. After all, Trump has made it clear that he has no intention of caving in to the country’s tech giants once he returns to the Oval Office.
“Big Tech has been running amok for years,” Trump said in a statement after nominating Gail Slater, an aide to Vice President-elect JD Vance, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
The industry, he added, is “stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to stifle the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!”
“I was proud to fight these abuses during my first term, and our Department of Justice’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership,” he added.
It was the first Trump administration that initially sued Google over antitrust concerns, leading a district court judge to rule in August that the tech giant illegally monopolized the search engine market.
It was also during the first Trump administration that the Federal Trade Commission sought to undo Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in a case scheduled for trial in April.
The first Trump administration also launched an antitrust investigation into Apple (APPL), prompting the Biden administration to sue the iPhone maker earlier this year.
Another ominous sign for Big Tech is that Trump last month nominated Brendan Carr to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, in addition to Slater’s appointment to the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
US President-elect Donald Trump speaks with Brendan Carr, his expected pick for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, on November 19. Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS ·via REUTERS / Reuters
Just days before getting that chairman appointment, Carr sent letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. , predicting “far-reaching actions to restore Americans’ First Amendment rights” once 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 wants to go to hold tech companies accountable.
During his campaign he was asked if he supported the spin-off of Google as an antidote to unhealthy competition in the search engine market. Trump suggested that punishing Google could be achieved without forcing it to sell parts of its empire.
“What you can do without breaking it is make sure it’s more fair,” Trump said in an Oct. 15 interview. The former president called Google’s search engine “rigged” and expressed concern that the fallout for Google in the case could favor China.
Google CEO Pichai said of Trump that “in my conversations with him, he is definitely very focused on American competitiveness, particularly in technology, including artificial intelligence.”
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, speaks during the New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit on December 4. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) ·Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images
Asked at a New York Times DealBook summit in New York whether Trump’s election changes the dynamics of Google’s antitrust case, he said: “This is a Department of Justice case, and the case is already in court.” , noting that it began during Trump’s first term. .
“So I don’t have any particular idea about it.” The company, he added, “will defend itself there.”
Stucke, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, predicted that antitrust enforcement will continue to be much more aggressive than under the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan.
“While antitrust laws may not be the same under Trump as they were under Biden, they will not go back to the way they were before.”
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
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