Big Tech Braces for Wave of Antitrust Rulings in 2024

U.S. antitrust cases against tech giants Google and Meta Platforms are expected to come to a head in 2024, likely producing long-awaited rulings that could shape the legacies of top Biden administration regulators..

A U.S. antitrust case brought against Alphabets Google unit in 2020 went to trial in 2023 and now heads to closing arguments in May..

When the nonjury trial ended in November after two months of testimony, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said he had no idea" how he was going to rule on the question at the heart of the case: whether Google, which answers about 90% of all internet search queries worldwide, cemented its monopoly through unlawful agreements that make its search engine the default on Apple devices and other products..

Kanter has been one of Googles main legal foes for nearly 15 years, a leader of a movement that sees big technology companies including Google, Amazon and Meta as monopolists in the tradition of the 19th-century railroad and oil companies that inspired the original antitrust laws..

But in December, a federal appeals court agreed with the FTC that Illuminas purchase of cancer-test developer Grail was anticompetitive, prompting the San Diego-based company to pursue what its CEO called an expeditious divestiture" of Grail by the middle of 2024.And on the last business day of 2023, a judge blocked healthcare data provider IQVIA from buying the owner of pharmaceutical ad-technology company DeepIntent, agreeing with the FTC that there was a reasonable probability that the proposed acquisition will substantially impair competition in the relevant market.".

You might be interested in