Reining in Big Tech?

Julia Angwin, Big Tech Is Finally Losing, NYTimes, June 12, 2025.

It’s easy to miss it amid the nonstop avalanche of news, but we are on the cusp of a technology revolution — one that could usher in an entirely new information landscape.

After 30 years of shockingly few regulatory restraints, America’s tech giants were beginning to operate almost like wrecking balls, slamming their weight into industry after industry and taking them out one after another. Boom. Uber crushed the taxi limousine business. Boom. Facebook toppled the news business. Boom. Amazon wiped out numerous small retailers.

Finally, our courts are beginning to push back.

In the past two months, courts have forced Apple to end its usurious tax on purchases made through apps on its phones, ruled that Google had abused its online ad monopoly and considered what consequences to impose on Google for what they concluded was an illegal dominance of the search market. A court has heard arguments about why Meta, which runs Facebook, should be forced to spin off popular rivals Instagram and WhatsApp, and allowed a case to proceed that alleges Amazon has abused its monopoly.

Reining in Big Tech appears to be one of the few bipartisan policies that has spanned the Biden and Trump administrations, despite the tech titans’ attempts to curry favor with the new president. Taken together, these developments could end years of stagnation and usher in more competition, smaller companies and better services. I personally can’t wait for competition in the search market — as Google results have been getting worse, by many estimates, including my own.

Amazon and Facebook:

Even more beneficial changes are likely in store as more court rulings come down. Another antitrust case alleges that close to 50 percent of the price of many goods sold on Amazon is made up of fees sellers must pay to the company to rank higher in its search results. That’s why so many of the top results are not the cheapest or best products, but rather the products that Amazon makes the most money from.

If the case against Amazon prevails, we could live in a world where we can actually find the products we want — and for lower prices.

Or consider Facebook, which is in court on allegations that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush competition. If the court forces Instagram and WhatsApp to be spun off as separate companies, we could suddenly have three distinct social media platforms with different algorithms that compete with one another to provide the best experience — rather than one monolithic experience run by a guy who says he no longer believes in fact-checking.

There's more at the link.