By Reuters | Updated: August 6, 2024
Aug 5 (Reuters) – Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google broke the law with an illegal monopoly on online search, a federal judge ruled on Monday, the first big win for U.S. antitrust authorities who have filed several lawsuits challenging Big Tech’s market dominance.
The ruling paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, possibly including a breakup of Alphabet, that would change the landscape of the online advertising world that Google has dominated for years.
Here are some key cases against Big Tech:
ALPHABET
The Google search case, filed by the Trump administration and went before a judge from September to November, will now see a “remedy” phase, followed by potential appeals to the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court.
Separately, Google was in February hit with a 2.1-billion-euro lawsuit by 32 media groups including Axel Springer and Schibsted (SCHA.OL) alleging that they had suffered losses due to the company’s practices in digital advertising.
The same month, Google asked a U.S. judge to throw out a jury verdict in a lawsuit by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games that found the technology giant had abused its market dominance in setting rules for its app store.
Epic Games had prevailed in the high-profile antitrust trial that if it holds could upend the entire app store economy.
APPLE
In March, the U.S. Department of Justice and 15 states sued Apple (AAPL.O) alleging the iPhone maker monopolized the smartphone market, hurt smaller rivals and drove up prices. The DOJ has been probing Apple since 2019.
The California-based firm is also under regulatory scrutiny in Europe and was earlier this year hit with a 1.84 billion euro ($2 billion) fine for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals through restrictions on its App Store.
Apple is appealing the penalty but faces more scrutiny under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) – new rules for Big Tech that went into effect earlier this month.
The European Commission in June determined that App Store’s rules breach the DMA, the first such charge by the regulator under the new rules.
Other lawsuits include a class action filed on March 1 in San Jose, California federal court accusing the company of monopolizing the market for cloud storage in its mobile devices.
META PLATFORMS
The EU regulator in June notified Meta that its pay or consent advertising model, already the target of privacy regulators and activists’ ire, was in breach of the DMA.
An appeals court ruled in March that Meta cannot stop the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from reopening a probe into its Facebook unit’s privacy practices for now. The company had objected, citing the $5 billion fine it paid and range of safeguards it had agreed.
In October last year, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta and its Instagram unit, accusing them of fueling a youth mental health crisis by making their social media platforms addictive.
The company was hit with a record 1.2 billion euro fine by its lead European Union privacy regulator in May 2023 over its handling of user information and given five months to stop transferring users’ data to the U.S.
AMAZON.COM
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com (AMZN.O) in September, charging the company with harming consumers with higher prices.
The FTC has also filed other lawsuits against the company, including one accusing the e-commerce giant of duping “millions of consumers” into purchasing subscriptions for Prime services.
($1 = 0.9178 euros)
@ Thomson Reuters 2024
