It’s An Antitrust Double Feature: Google And Meta Are Both Battling Against Breakups | AdExchanger (2025)

Do you fancy watching Google argue against a forced breakup of its business in open court?

Or maybe you’re more in the mood to see Meta defend itself against allegations that it operates an illegal social media monopoly.

Either way, you’re in luck, because you can do both in the very same courthouse.

On Monday, the remedies phase of the Google search trial began, which follows Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling last year that Google unlawfully maintained a monopoly in the general search and text-based search advertising markets.

For those proceedings, scheduled to last roughly three weeks, take the elevator to the fourth floor of the US District Court in Washington, DC, and head to Courtroom 10.

Monday also marked the start of the second week of the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Meta, in which it contends that the company, back when it was still called Facebook, acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to eliminate them as competitive threats.

To check out that case, which could run until July, make your way to Courtroom 22 on the second floor, with Chief Judge James Boasberg presiding.

And this reporter did exactly that on Monday. It was Mehta in the morning and Meta in the afternoon. Scroll to the end for a few takeaways from the day.

Too big to ignore

But first, it’s not surprising that Big Tech is on its back foot.

Antitrust scrutiny has been intensifying for multiple reasons, including bipartisan support for tougher enforcement, public pressure and heightened concern about “killer acquisitions,” like Meta’s aforementioned purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp and Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick.

Speaking of DoubleClick, Google was just handed its second antitrust loss last week after Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia found that Google “willfully” acquired and maintained monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets and also unlawfully tied its publisher ad server with its ad exchange.

High-profile victories like that one –and the DOJ’s win in the search antitrust case –send a strong signal that large tech platforms aren’t made of Teflon and that they can and will be held accountable for anticompetitive conduct.

Eventually. Maybe.

Appealing the onion

The judicial process in an antitrust case is lengthy and complex. Just ask Microsoft. Or consider the timeline of the government’s successful search case against Google.

The Department of Justice investigated Google for around 19 months before filing its lawsuit in October 2020 alongside 30 state attorneys general, who also ran their own investigations into Google’s dominance of the search market.

It then took nearly three years for the eight-week trial to begin in September 2023. Judge Mehta didn’t issue his ruling against Google until August 2024. The remedies phase has only just started and Judge Mehta isn’t expected to issue his decision on Google’s punishment until August.

But that’s not where it ends. Google has said it plans to file an appeal once the remedies phase concludes –a process that could drag on for years. And until there’s a final decision, Google doesn’t have to make any changes to its products or alter its behavior in any way.

The formula for fair play?

If the government gets its way, though, and secures all of its remedies, Google will have to make a heck of a lot of major changes.

The DOJ wants Google to (1) divest Chrome; (2) end all exclusive search agreements with device makers and browser developers; (3) be prohibited from striking similar deals in future for emerging tech, such as AI; (4) be forced to license search results to its rivals, as well as share its search data, including advertising data; and, finally, (5) end all rev share agreements that make Google Search the default option.

To top it off, if Google doesn’t satisfactorily comply with these remedies, the DOJ is asking to reserve the right to force a sale of Android.

If it actually happens, all of that will have a massive impact on both Google and the online advertising industry.

Putting aside the fact that selling Chrome would weaken Google’s ability to send traffic to its own search and advertising products, a Chrome divestiture would also open the door for rival ad platforms to compete for users and advertisers –everyone from Meta and Microsoft Advertising to TikTok and Taboola.

Meanwhile, according to the DOJ, requiring Google to share ad performance metrics would restore competition to the market by helping other ad platforms train their algorithms and improve their offerings.

A remedy worse than the disease?

According to Google, however, disclosing too much information to advertisers would be tantamount to giving away trade secrets, because buyers could use that data to rig ad auctions.

And that’s just one of the problems with the DOJ’s proposed remedies, which, in the words of Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein, are “fundamentally flawed” and would directly interfere with normal market conduct.

The DOJ’s proposals are nothing more than a “wish list for competitors” that want to access Google’s decades of investment and development work, he said, and they would “hand distribution to rivals without having to compete for it.”

In fact, Schmidtlein quipped during his opening statements on Monday that the wished-for remedies are so broad that if a judge or lawyer was asked to look at them without having had an opportunity to also read the judgment, “they wouldn’t have a clue what the case was about.”

Google is only willing to make a handful of limited concessions as remedies, including an end to exclusive search agreements and allowing device makers the ability to preload Google apps, including Google Search, without also having to preload Chrome (and vice versa).

Google, quelle surprise, is vehemently opposed to broader structural and behavior changes, such as selling Chrome and banning payments to be the search default.

‘Antitrust antifreeze’

Naturally, the government takes a rather different view.

This case is about improving competition and lowering the barriers to entry so that other companies can build ad platforms “on par with Google,” said Jonathan Sallet, an attorney who represented the states during the government’s opening statements.

Sallet ended his remarks with a bit of wordplay referencing previous testimony by Sridhar Ramaswamy, who used to lead Google’s search and ad products (and later founded Neeva, the failed AI search engine that was acquired by Snowflake in 2023).

During the trial, Ramaswamy had said that Google’s default search payments “basically freeze the ecosystem in place,” making it borderline impossible for rivals to gain share.

Sallet seized on the word “freeze.”

“Our remedies are antitrust antifreeze,” he said. “We’re trying to open up the ecosystem.”

Shot & chaser: ‘No Ads!’

If you stuck with me this long, then here’s one more tidbit, this one from FTC vs. Meta over in Courtroom 22.

The testimony on Monday afternoon was not what one would call electrifying. The only witness on the stand after lunch was Neeraj Arora, an executive on Google’s corporate development team in late 2010 and early 2011 who was involved in Google’s unsuccessful $100 million bid to acquire WhatsApp.

Arora later left Google to lead business development for WhatsApp, having become acquainted with the founders during Google’s attempt to buy the company (which, fun fact, was called “Project Roth” –for some reason – according to a deck that was entered into evidence).

At one point during cross examination, Meta’s attorney entered an image of a scrap of paper into evidence on which WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton had scribbled: “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!” Acton Co-Founder Jan Koum apparently kept this note taped to his desk.

The attorney asked Arora what the note meant and whether he was aware of any plans to incorporate ads into WhatsApp.

The founders “only cared about building a useful product for users,” Arora said. “They did not want to do it [monetize with ads] –not even as a discussion point.”

Well, that ship sailed, and so did Acton and Koum. They left Facebook in 2017 and 2018, respectively, in large part because of disputes over monetization.

By the way: If you’re interested in daily updates from FTC v. Meta, let me recommend Lauren Feiner and Alex Heath’s brief daily missives at The Verge. They’re all over it.