Three antitrust lawsuits in less than two years that add further twists to the pressure. The US administration is tightening its grip on the greatest titans born in that country even further. The latest step was made public this Thursday, when the Department of Justice filed a complaint against Apple for maintaining its position in the market with illegal restrictions. This siege is intensifying at the height of the ‘momentum’ of these companies due to the explosion of artificial intelligence as a new great technology and after years of criticism of the EU for doing the same thing years ago.
Amazon, Google and also Meta itself (Facebook) face several open battles, which could end in a ‘piecemeal’ with the sale of assets to reduce their power or facilitate competition or with the payment of fines of thousands of millions of dollars. euros. And above all, they will bring about relevant changes in the business and its practices that could put their empires at risk. “This lawsuit threatens who we are,” an Apple spokesperson summarized this Thursday. And he does it in his ‘house’. In the main income barn. For the iPhone maker, the US represents about half of its $383 billion in revenue. For Amazon that proportion is even higher and represents two thirds. For Google it was 47% of its 307 billion.
For years, the European Commission’s repeated billion-dollar sanctions against all these large multinationals for their abuses of position became diplomatic problems. Donald Trump himself, former president and presidential candidate in this year’s elections, harshly attacked Competition Commissioner Margherete Vestager on several occasions. The Secretary of State for Commerce, under the presidency of Joe Biden, criticized the restrictive rules on the continent. The administration sent several letters to Brussels asking for regulatory leniency but doing nothing. They maintained a difficult balance: criticizing external ‘attacks’ on their companies, while trying to control them.
Apple as a symbol
Apple is one of those American symbols. And since this week it is also in the spotlight. This Thursday, the Department of Justice – the federal agency responsible for law enforcement in the US, equivalent to an attorney general’s office – made public a lawsuit against the iPhone manufacturer for having carried out anti-competitive practices not only in the mobile businesses. . and watches (Watch), but also the browser, its messaging application, its ‘app’ store or advertising. Practices that “are designed to maintain power and at the same time extract as much income as possible.”
The words of the country’s Deputy Antitrust Attorney General, Jonathan Kanter, summarize well what has happened in the last fifteen years in the US market. “Apple itself was a major beneficiary of the Microsoft case.” He refers to the complaint that the American Government made against the Windows manufacturer in the 1990s, the solution of which “paved the way for Apple to launch iTunes, iPod and, finally, the iPhone, free of anti-competitive restrictions, excessive tariffs and retaliation. “Now, three decades later, it faces a lawsuit for having implemented anti-competitive measures as well.
The year 2019 was key. In that difficult balance between criticizing the external ‘attacks’ against these companies and their control, the fence began to tighten. The United States Government was preparing to investigate Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, which are responsible for enforcing antitrust laws in the United States, divided supervision of the four firms on that date. Amazon and Facebook, under the FTC, and Google and Apple, under Justice. The first three had already been launched. Now the fourth is added.
Other cases
The case of Google is the most advanced. Last November, the trial held in Washington was seen for sentencing with Microsoft as one of the most belligerent rivals in their testimonies. During more than two months of closed-door hearings, thousands of documents were presented to prove its abuses of position and the illegal maintenance of a monopoly on the search engine market – where it has agreements with mobile phone manufacturers, web browser creators and other providers to be the default search engine that cost them $26 billion a year in 2021 alone. It is expected that there will be a ruling throughout this year, 2024. The US administration and the fifty-year-old states that have led this lawsuit do not demand money, they are a court order to prevent these practices. And this could lead to the ‘cutting up’ of the company or the demand for the withdrawal of these exclusivity alliances.
The case of Amazon was also highly anticipated. In this case, the Commerce Commission filed its complaint against the e-commerce giant last September, accusing the company of harming consumers with higher prices. The department, led by Lina Khan, especially critical of the practices of these companies, asked the court to consider forcing the group founded by Jeff Bezos to sell assets. The focus was on its management of the marketplace open to third-party sellers. Prosecutors also filed other cases against the company, including one accusing it of misleading “millions of consumers” into buying Prime subscriptions.
Other measures
Lawsuits for illegally maintaining monopolies are not the only weapons that have been put on the table in recent times in the United States against these giants. In addition to some cases linked to privacy or the use of data, much more pressure has also been placed on one of the weak points that have allowed the construction of these ’empires’: acquisitions. The Government has launched an investigation into the entry of Microsoft and its strategic alliance into OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT. In addition, the FTC also requested to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, although it was ultimately carried out.
This much closer scrutiny in the most relevant market for these multinationals also occurs at a key moment in technological history. All large groups are trying to position themselves in the new wave: that of artificial intelligence. They are investing thousands of millions of euros in building their own tools or participating in startup projects that do so. The pieces will shake again.
