The United States has tired of the monopolies of great technological ones. And wants to start “chop them” with goal

The United States turned a blind eye with its great technological for years. He did not pay too much attention to whether they abused their privilege position or had monopolistic and anti -competitive behaviors, Something that was pursued by the European Union. That has changed, and we are seeing how one after another the Big Tech are being scrutinized in the American judicial courts. Not only that: the threat to those giants is to finish chopped.

FTC against goal. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) trial of the United States began yesterday, and for two months it will try to decide whether the company created by Mark Zuckerberg is a monopoly in the “personal social media services market” market. The consequences can be huge for the goal, which could be forced to divide into several companies.

Zuckerberg on the stage. As they point out In The New York TimesMark Zuckerberg came yesterday as a witness to defend “his social media empire.” The FTC lawyers showed several emails in which they raised their argument: what a target “illegally cemented a social networks monopoly by acquiring Instagram and goal when they were small startups.”

Zuckerberg made it clear in this Email of April 2012. Better buy than to compete. Source: Big Tech on Trial.

If it is a threat to your domain, buy it. The Tactics of the FTC lawyers is to demonstrate that goal used their privilege position to buy companies that could represent a threat in the future. It is the strategy that Some call (rightly) “Better buy than to compete.” To those accusations Zuckerberg replied saying that they ended up investing a lot of money in them after buying them, but doing so they managed not only to reinforce their dominant position, but to eliminate those threats that Instagram or WhatsApp raised.

The FTC proposes to chop target. If the government wins the trial, they point out on the Times, the FTC probably asks for the goal to divide into several parts. Thus, Instagram and WhatsApp could be independent companies that would compete with each other with Facebook, or at least that would be the intention of the government.

Too much power. Thus, the government must demonstrate that goal would not have had the same success without those acquisitions. It is something really complicated, but this is part of the effort of recent years to try to mitigate the enormous power that technological giants have. These privilege positions allow these companies to clearly influence the exchange of ideas, entertainment and of course political debate.

A peculiar judge. The case is chaired by Judge James Boasberg, 62, who already faced a Trump decision in a previous case but that above all attracts attention by a choice: he affirms that he has never used the goal applications, although he is familiar with Facebook Live, which has been used in some criminal cases.

Google is in the same. Last summer, federal judge Amit Mehta pronounced a few words that were not evident were less important: “Google is a monopoly“.

And threat of “chopstick”Fines do not seem to function as punishment for these types of companies, and for years another option than politicians has been considered Like Senator Warren They defend to act against the Big Tech: chop them. In the case of Google, the sentence could force Alphabet, the matrix, to get rid of Chrome and even Android.

Apple, another of the objectives. In March 2024 the Department of Defense (DOJ) accused Apple of being a monopoly and to close the iPhone and iOS to the competitors. The United States followed the steps of Europe, although in this case, which has not yet concluded, a company’s split was not raised.

Amazon is a monopoly. Years before the US Congress has already concluded that Amazon was a monopoly in the field of electronic commerce. The long investigation ended with A document of almost 500 pages, but had no specific consequences beyond an attempt to reform legislation in this regard.

The US follows the EU wake. For years the European Union has been the nemesis of the large technological companies of the US, which it has stopped with fines and sentences that punished anti -competitive practices. We saw it a few months ago when Meta received A fine of almost 800 million euros for one of this type of cases.

The new roof of the Big Tech. Microsoft was a clear objective of the European Commission at the beginning of the century, and since then the antitrust cases They have happened constantly, as companies such as Google either Apple. In the US, such issues seemed to be in the background, but from a time to this part of the US justice It has become very serious With these companies, as we have been able to check with Amazon, Apple, Google and now Meta.

Image | Goal

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