Did Big Tech Get Too Big? U.S. Crackdown Seeks Answer

The rise of global technology superstars Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google created new challenges for the competition watchdogs who enforce antitrust laws. The companies dominate markets in e-commerce and smartphones, search advertising and social-media traffic. An anti-monopoly crackdown that began under President Donald Trump is continuing under President Joe Biden, who has surrounded himself with outspoken advocates for vigorous antitrust enforcement against U.S. tech companies.

In the final months of the Trump administration, the U.S. Justice Department sued Alphabet Inc.’s Google and the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook Inc. over allegations that they violated antitrust laws. (The FTC is fighting to revive its Facebook lawsuit, which was thrown out by a federal judge on June 28.) Those are the biggest antitrust actions against a tech giant since the U.S. sued Microsoft Corp. more than two decades ago. State attorneys general across the country joined the federal cases against Facebook and Google, while Texas led another group that sued Google over its role in the online advertising market. Another group of states sued Google in early July over what they said are anticompetitive tactics around its app store, Google Play. In the U.S. Congress, lawmakers from both parties are pushing legislation to end alleged anti-competitive practices in the tech industry.