The courtroom battles now underway against Meta and Google are not just about past behavior; they are about shaping the future of the internet.
The Federal Trade Commission’s case against Meta hinges on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. According to regulators, Meta paid a premium to snuff out emerging competitors and preserve its dominance in social networking. The FTC wants both platforms divested—a clean, structural solution. Meta counters that these platforms thrived under its ownership and that the real threat to its monopoly claim is TikTok, not internal cannibalization.
Meanwhile, Google is in even deeper. A federal judge has already ruled that the company illegally maintained a monopoly in search. Now, the government wants Chrome and Android—Google’s key distribution arms—pried loose. The rationale? These platforms are not neutral; they are gatekeepers that cement Google’s hold on search.
Google argues that the remedy is wildly disproportionate. Breaking apart Chrome or Android would, in its view, hurt consumers more than help them. It has vowed to appeal.
These cases ask the courts to do more than punish past misdeeds; they ask judges to serve as market designers. That rarely ends well. Even the Supreme Court, in an unrelated unanimous ruling in 2021, warned against letting judges act as “central planners.”
Still, structural remedies are appealing because they are bold and definitive. If the goal is to open up space for innovation, a breakup feels decisive. But history shows the results are mixed. Breakups do not always lead to sustained competition. Sometimes they just rearrange the players.
And there is another problem: time. These legal fights stretch across years, even decades. By the time any breakup is executed, the competitive landscape may already look different.
Which brings us back to the central lesson of antitrust history: remedies must be carefully calibrated to encourage competition without damaging consumers or innovation. Whether that means breakup, divestiture, or conduct restrictions, the end goal should remain the same—making space for new challengers to thrive.
In the Meta and Google cases, the courts now face the challenge of learning from the past without blindly repeating it. And for regulators, this may be the most delicate operation in decades—surgical precision required.