"On Tuesday, that same judge unveiled Google's punishment, which amounts to ... not too much, all things considered. There are plenty of places to find analysis of Judge Amit Mehta's ruling, but the fastest way to process it is to see what Wall Street thinks: Google stock is up 9% on Wednesday. And if you take a few more seconds, you can see how the specter of a major antitrust case has affected Google since the US government first filed suit in October 2020."
"So maybe it's time to formally acknowledge that the larger push in the US to break up, or simply rein in, Big Tech is basically over. That effort started in the mid-2010s, but really sped up after Donald Trump's first election in 2016. Back then, there was lots of talk about the fact that giant US tech companies had grown enormously powerful over the past couple decades, with very little oversight from anyone in the US government."
A 2024 federal ruling found Google held an illegal monopoly in search, yet the court's remedy was modest and markets reacted positively. Google stock rose, reflecting investor judgment that regulatory risk posed little long-term harm; shares climbed from about $80 in 2020 to $231 recently. The push to break up or heavily regulate Big Tech accelerated after 2016 with bipartisan scrutiny, numerous hearings, reports, investigations, and lawsuits. Despite executive-branch actions, Congress failed to pass meaningful legislation to constrain tech giants. The political and market signals indicate diminished prospects for major US legislative action against Big Tech.
Read at Business Insider
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]