A US judge recently decided not to break up Google, despite a ruling last year that the company held a monopoly in the online search market. Between Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Meta, there are more than 45 ongoing antitrust investigations in the EU (the majority under the new EU Digital Markets Act) and in the US.
While the outcome could have been much worse for Google, other rulings and investigations have the potential to cut to the heart of how the big tech companies make money. As such, these antitrust cases can drive real change around how the tech giants do business – with implications both for their competitors and for ordinary users.
Some investigations focus on potential breaches of longstanding competition legislation, such as restricting the ability of software to work with other software, while others address controversies that have emerged only in the last few years.
