The Ice Bath
Over the course of 40 days last Fall, Big Tech on Trial brought you daily updates on the first major antitrust trial of the 21st Century. By the time closing arguments commence this Thursday, May 2, nearly 6 months will have passed since the conclusion of those headline-stealing proceedings. It’s the litigation equivalent of an ice bath, enough time to forget what the case was about or why it mattered, and part of a larger pattern of frustrating litigation delays. The Federal Trade Commission is pushing for a 2024 trial date in a case filed in December 2020 against Meta’s alleged social media monopoly. The FTC’s case against Amazon is expected to go to trial in 2026, three years after the filing of the FTC’s long-awaited case against the multinational conglomerate.
Compare these timelines to the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against Microsoft in 1998. The case against Microsoft was filed on May 18, 1998. On May 22, a trial date was set, and trial commenced 5 months later on October 18, 1998. If you put the timeline of the Microsoft case against that of the current case against Google Search, the Microsoft case had already been appealed to the DC Circuit, remanded to the lower court, and almost completely resolved before trial would have begun in the Google Search case.
Protracted litigation delays have real consequences beyond the inevitable cynicism that flows from delayed justice. While we wait for Judge Amit Mehta to decide whether Google’s $26 billion per year (at least) agreement to secure default search on Apple devices is legal, Apple and Google are moving forward with talks to embed Google’s Gemini AI in its next iPhone update. It’s as clear an indication as any that the Google Search case is about the future of AI innovation, too. Despite a looming smack-down by a federal court, Apple and Google are conducting business as usual.
