A MART脥NEZ, HOST:
A judge ruled yesterday that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is not a monopoly, and it can keep WhatsApp and Instagram. Now, it's a black eye for the government, which launched the case, but analysts say it could help spark fresh debate over how best to regulate big tech. Here's NPR's John Ruwitch.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: The Federal Trade Commission argued that Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago as part of a buy-or-bury strategy to stifle competition. It asked for the company, now called Meta, to be broken up, but the judge said no. There's plenty of competition in social media, even more today than when the case began in 2020. This is one in a string of high-profile antitrust lawsuits that analysts have been watching closely.
REBECCA HAW ALLENSWORTH: I think that it is fair to say that there was a coordinated government attempt to rein in big tech in terms of competitive harms.
RUWITCH: That's Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of law at Vanderbilt University. She says the results of the campaign have been mixed so far. The FTC lost this case against Meta, but the Department of Justice prevailed in two recent antitrust cases against Google. There's a caveat, though. Some experts saw the punishments ordered in one of the Google cases in September as soft. The DOJ wanted the court to make Google sell its Chrome browser, but that judge also said no.
ALLENSWORTH: It certainly feels like the wind has come out of the sails of the government's lawsuits against big tech for antitrust violations.
RUWITCH: Bill Kovacic is a former FTC chairman who now teaches at the George Washington University Law School.
BILL KOVACIC: Those two data points might suggest to you this is the wrong methodology.
RUWITCH: By this, he means litigation, anti trust lawsuits. He says members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have been pushing for legislation on things like competitive behavior and user safety and security.
KOVACIC: So one thing that we may see coming out of this is a renewed debate about how one goes about addressing issues concerning high levels of concentration and abusive behavior.
RUWITCH: Rallying around specifics, however, has been a little harder.
John Ruwitch, NPR News.
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