{"id":26012,"date":"2025-04-15T17:19:58","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T17:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26012"},"modified":"2025-04-15T19:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T19:25:08","slug":"the-u-s-wants-to-break-up-google-and-meta-that-could-be-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26012","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Wants to Break Up Google and Meta. That Could Be Hard."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The last time the courts seriously weighed the wisdom of breaking up a giant technology company was a quarter-century ago, after Microsoft was found to have illegally stifled competition<\/a> in personal computer software.<\/p>\n

A Federal District Court judge said yes to forcing Microsoft to split in two, separating its monopoly Windows operating system from its Office productivity products and other software. But an appeals court threw out<\/a> the order, calling the breakup option \u201ca remedy that is imposed only with great caution, in part because its long-term efficacy is rarely certain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a pair of landmark proceedings this month in two Washington courtrooms, the issue of possibly breaking up a big tech company will be on the judicial table again.<\/p>\n

In an antitrust trial that began on Monday, the Federal Trade Commission argued that Meta<\/a> maintained an illegal monopoly in social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The agency seeks to force Meta to divest both. Next week at a separate proceeding, a federal judge will hear arguments from the Justice Department<\/a> about why the court should break up Google in order to remedy the company\u2019s monopoly in internet search.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cDivestiture can be an entirely acceptable remedy, depending on the severity of the harm,\u201d said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the F.T.C. \u201cBut it can be risky surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

For generations, the courts have faced the quandary of what action to take in major antitrust cases once a dominant company has been found to have engaged in anticompetitive behavior. In a 1947 Supreme Court ruling, Justice Robert H. Jackson memorably wrote that if a court\u2019s solution did not open the market to competition, the government would have \u201cwon a lawsuit and lost a cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The last time the courts seriously weighed the wisdom of breaking up a giant technology company was a quarter-century ago, after Microsoft was found to have illegally stifled competition in personal computer software.A Federal District Court judge said yes to forcing Microsoft to split in two, separating its monopoly Windows operating system from its Office productivity products and other software. But an appeals court threw out the order, calling the breakup option \u201ca remedy that is imposed only with great caution, in part because its long-term efficacy is rarely certain.\u201dIn a pair of landmark proceedings this month in two Washington courtrooms, the issue of possibly breaking up a big tech company will be on the judicial table again.In an antitrust trial that began on Monday, the Federal Trade Commission argued that Meta maintained an illegal monopoly in social media through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The agency seeks to force Meta to divest both. Next week at a separate proceeding, a federal judge will hear arguments from the Justice Department about why the court should break up Google in order to remedy the company\u2019s monopoly in internet search.\u201cDivestiture can be an entirely acceptable remedy, depending on the severity of the harm,\u201d said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the F.T.C. \u201cBut it can be risky surgery.\u201dFor generations, the courts have faced the quandary of what action to take in major antitrust cases once a dominant company has been found to have engaged in anticompetitive behavior. In a 1947 Supreme Court ruling, Justice Robert H. Jackson memorably wrote that if a court\u2019s solution did not open the market to competition, the government would have \u201cwon a lawsuit and lost a cause.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26014,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26015,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26012\/revisions\/26015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}