May 8, 2025 • 20 mins
Google has lost two antitrust cases in the past year; Meta is currently in court over alleged anti-competitive behavior. Big Tech is in a moment of reckoning that could reshape the industry – and your internet use – for decades to come.
Today on the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier and Sara Forden join host Sarah Holder to unpack the trials seeking to rein in Silicon Valley. Will the antitrust cases against Google and Meta help innovation flourish, or kill America’s chances at AI dominance?
Read more: Apple Eyes Move to AI Search, Ending Era Defined by Google
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Right now, in one
federal courthouse in DC, two of the world's biggest tech
companies are facing reckoning. On the second floor, Meta, the
company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is up against monopoly
(00:21):
charges filed by the Federal Trade Commission. And two floors
up is Google, which recently lost to anti trust cases
and is now awaiting a judgment that could lead to
a breakup of the company. Both cases are part of
the US government's growing anti trust enforcement push that's been
putting increasing pressure on big tech.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's kind of stunning that this is the one issue,
this anti tech sentiment. We know they're powerful, we need
to do something about it. That is like the most
bipartisan topic now and in the past ten years.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I want to say that's Sarah Fryer, a Bloomberg technology
editor who's been following these cases.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This is really driven a strange thread of collaboration between
Republicans and Democrats over the years, from the first Trump
administration to the Biden administration and now in the second
Trump administration. Trying to tie it all up with a bow.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Today on the show Big Tech Is on Trial, how
the monopoly claims against Google and Meta could reshape the
industry and the way we use the Internet for decades
to come. I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big
take from Bloomberg News. I am thrilled to be sitting
(01:43):
down with two of Bloomberg's eminent Sarah's. We have Sarah Fryer.
She's a technology editor for Bloomberg and the author of
No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram. Welcome Sarah, Thanks
for having me and Sarah Forden our second Sarah or
our third, depending on how you're counting. She oversees legal
news at Bloomberg, and she's been covering Google and its
(02:05):
court battles since twenty ten. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Sarah Fryer.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You've been on the tech beat for a while, and
you've traced how big tech companies have been under increasing
scrutiny in recent years, including in the anti trust space.
What led us to this moment? Why are Google and
Meta in court facing monopoly lawsuits at roughly the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I think it's a combination of a few really important things.
The government has gotten a lot smarter about the level
of power that these companies have and how they're wielding it.
A lot of the first awakening of these companies and
what they've done was centered around the consumer experience. It
was stuff around privacy, content moderation. You know, did they
(02:49):
let Russia manipulate the twenty sixteen presidential election? But these
anti trust trials over the years, the government's gotten really
smart about exactly what makes these companies tech. For Meta,
the trial centers around how Mark Zuckerberg built his empire,
literally the secret sauce of like why his company got
(03:10):
so big and powerful. The Google trial is centered around search,
their power and search and what they can do to
remedy what they've now declared to be an illegal monopoly power,
as well as attech, which is how they make most
of their revenues.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Just just take a step back and follow on what
Sarah Fryer said. Another reason it took a long time
to get here was that these companies are primarily offering
free services, and typically anti trust law had looked at
price and are things getting more expensive for consumers? So
they had to really revisit how they're looking at these companies.
And so what you have now are you two behemoth
(03:48):
tech platforms they're making goodzillions of dollars every year on
people's data and information, and so that sort of became
the new currency in these cases. And the government and
a trust of forcers have taken a long time to
study these markets, so both the search market and how
advertising works in search, and the social networking market, and
(04:12):
so it represents a longer term building of appreciating how
big and powerful these companies came and how unfettered they were.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Sarah Fordon, I want to take a closer look at
the Google trial. Judges have already ruled in two separate
cases that Google is a monopoly. One case involves Google Search,
the other is tied to the company's ad technology. As
you mentioned, we're now in the remedy stage of the
first trial, the one that involved Google search monopoly. So
what are the proposed remedies here?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, so that trial is now in its final week.
The judge's been hearing arguments from both sides, and the
DOJ wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser. That
is probably the most dramatic remedy proposal. And while Google
argues that has nothing to do with the harms in
this case and the monopoly over search, the government says
(05:07):
that the browser is really the gateway to the Internet,
and so that's vital for that to be opened up
to competition. The other thing that the government wants is
for Google to share data related to search queries. And
then the third area is the government wants a judge
to ban Google from doing any kind of exclusive search
agreements the way it had with Apple and with Samsung,
(05:29):
so that Google was the default browser and search engine
on people's smartphones.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So that's the search monopoly case, which is in its
final week. Can you explain big picture why the DOJ
believes Google has been anti competitive in its ad sales.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah. So this was a separate, a totally separate case
that was brought under the Biden administration. And this case
looks at the pipeline of technology that Google controls and
underpins its ability to serve ads on the web. And
over the years, it acquired a number of companies, including
one called double Click and one called ad Mold, which
(06:08):
allows it to control the whole transaction. And the issue
there is that it's not transparent at all. It's a
very opaque process, so nobody can actually see how the
prices are formed and how the decisions about the cost
of ads are made. It allows Google to collect what
the government calls in a monopoly rents, and that means
(06:30):
that publishers are making less money, and it means that
advertisers are spending more money, and those costs ultimately get
passed on to consumers. So the government is alleging that
this system, because it's so powerfully controlled by Google, really
is operating to the detriment of consumers.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Very broadly, and Sarah fryar, these cases are ostensibly at
their core about search and ad sales products and functions
that have been Google's core offerings for years, but AI
has also become a signific can factor here in these
cases too. Can you talk about how this case has
been looking at Google's investments in AI and how the
(07:09):
company might have to shift its strategy in the AI
space in the wake of these anti trust rulings.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
That's so key here, I mean in terms of AI.
The judge in this search case says he wants to
consider that in his remedy for this problem. And a
couple of things have come up in the case that
make Google look pretty bad. One is that they have
these very expensive deals with Samsung. Google said this on
(07:37):
the stand, they have these deals with Samsung to have
their Gemini AAI pre installed on phones. Now judges have
twice ruled those kinds of exclusive pre installed deals illegal.
Google's doing it anyway for the next big market. The
other thing that's really become clear in this remedies trial
is how Google already has such extreme step ahead in
(08:03):
the AI realm because of the data it has on
the search. If you are a website that has your
content index by Google Search, you are opting into being
used in Google's AI training. There's no way to opt
out of that, besides opting out of being discoverable on
Google Search, which is the government argue is basically equivalent
(08:24):
with the Internet, right.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, And if I can just jump in here, I mean,
the dj is extremely concerned that the advent of AI
could quickly allow Google to further entrench its monopoly. On
the other hand, they're trying to walk a very fine line.
They don't want to hold back like emerging technology either,
and so for example, they decided not to ban Google
(08:46):
from acting as an investor in new AI enterprises. So
Google as a VC investor to help start up new
AI ventures. They're going to let that go ahead because
they want Google to compete with Microsoft and Apple and
the others who are quickly developing.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Well, Sarah, I want to switch gears to talk about Meta.
While the US government has already won twice against Google,
the case against Meta is still ongoing right now, we're
about halfway through. Can you just help us understand what
landed Meta in court and what's been litigated so far.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
There is a strategy that the FTC is highlighting here
from Mark Zuckerberg and his way of growing companies. They're
concerned that he is seeing a competitor to his business
crop up, get traction, build their network effect, and out
of fear that his company will get overtaken by them
(09:45):
or lose some users to them, he just acquires them
or tries to copy them. And he's done this over
and over and over. So the two acquisitions that are
most in focus in this trial or the Instagram acquisition
in twenty twelve and then What's acquisition in twenty fourteen,
which was pretty much inspired by the success of the
Instagram acquisition. This is complicated for the FTC because at
(10:10):
the time, the FTC was given an opportunity to give
a stamp of approval on these acquisitions, and they said,
go forth, we you know, we're not going to challenge this,
And so Meta's trying to say, you know, you're trying
to speak has passed?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Does Meta still seem like it's going to win this case?
Have the dynamic shifted?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Well?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Meta would would say they're pretty confident. But I think
that the emails that have surfaced, it is true that
Zuckerberg and his leaders were constantly looking behind their shoulders
to see if anyone was catching up with them in
the race, and constantly trying to think, how can we
either crush them, buy them, build our own version of this.
(10:52):
So the FTC has been very good at showing that
the problem is their market definition for what they consider
to be metas monopoly. It's this kind of made up
category personal social networking. They say that in their market definition,
the social networks that Meta owns only compete with snap,
(11:15):
which makes Snapchat in MIUI, which is I don't even
I don't even know, I haven't heard of that one.
And if you're a modern user of social media, that's
kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Sarah Forden, what's your take?
Speaker 3 (11:28):
So the case all of these anti trust cases will
ultimately turn on what the judge accepts as the market definition,
and so here the FTC is arguing that meta occupies
dominates the space for personal social networking that's basically sharing
with friends and family. So when you want to share
something with friends and family, you'll go to Facebook. And
(11:51):
the key thing is going to be also what the competitors,
so medicaying, well, we compete with TikTok, we compete with
all these other platforms. The key thing is and be
what those competitors say about who they perceive as competition.
So are they competing with Facebook or are they just
doing their own thing?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
After the break the political jockeying behind the scenes of
these anti trust trials and what the case's outcomes could
mean for social media and search, I want to talk
about the politics and I want to talk about the
(12:32):
implications of these trials, Sarah Fordan anti trust enforcement of
big tech, as you both talked about, has been a
rare example of continuity across both the Biden and Trump administrations.
Can you explain the politics at play here?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah, what we're seeing is really a sea change in
antitrust enforcement that's built up over at least the last
ten plus years, and it's a shift whereby both Republicans
and Democrats have started to see corporate solidation broadly and
corporate power in the tech sector specifically really grow to
be very powerful. So the Democrats will look at consumer harm,
(13:11):
whereas the Republican started to see that these companies were
so powerful they felt they were a suppressing conservative speech.
And yet, even though they're coming from very different perspectives,
the one thing they agree on is that these companies
have gotten too big and too powerful, and it's time
to put some guardrails in place.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Sarah Friar, You've been tracking Mark Zuckerberg's relationship with Trump
and his lobbying efforts. Can you talk about whether they've failed.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Well. I think a lot of the big tech leaders
thought of Trump as a transactional president. They have been
to dinner with Trump, They've been to his inauguration, They've
donated to initiatives he cares about, and so that is
something that they hoped, especially Mark Zuckerberg, HOTE would help
(13:58):
them have an audience. Zuckerberg has had some luck in
getting Trump and JD Vance to talk about what Europe's
doing and saying that Europe shouldn't be holding back our
American tech companies. They have had some success in getting
the administration to agree that big tech in America should
(14:19):
be the winner of the global AI race, not those
companies in China, right, But it really hasn't worked on
anti trusts Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, like, they're still all
completely in the crosshairs on that topic. And Zuckerberg personally
tried to get Trump to let Meta settle this case
(14:42):
and the FTC and Trump weren't willing to go for it.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Well, I want to talk about what the outcomes of
these trials could mean for people who use the Internet
or use these social media and tech platforms. If Google
had to sell off Chrome, for example, or if the
metatrial doesn't go its way, what would that mean for
someone trying to make a search going on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I think that first of all, whatever happens is going
to take a long time to happen, because the resolution
of the trial will come and then Google will likely
appeal it, and then there's going to be some back
and forth. But Apple last week was forced to allow
app creators in its app store to receive payments in
(15:28):
other ways than through iPhones, and notoriously Apple takes a
large cut of the payments that go through the app store,
So this is going to hit them in terms of
their revenue. So I think we might see more things
like that, like little parts of their operations that seem
(15:51):
kind of, Oh, this is just the way it's always worked.
I'm used to this as a consumer, realizing that it
doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to
have our Chrome browser following us around the entire Internet
and tracking everything we do in every other website to
personalize our results. And with the FTC case, the most
(16:11):
dramatic possible outcome is a spin off of Instagram and
WhatsApp from Meta. That would be like, absolutely unheard of
in the history of the Internet that a deal that's
more than ten years old gets undone. I just can't
even imagine, because they have done so much on the
(16:31):
back end to integrate those products. Certainly they could disentangle them,
but they'd both fight very hard.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
But I guess the government's argument in all of these
cases is that it's better for consumers if there's more competition,
if there's less monopoly activity. That's kind of the core
of these arguments, right, Yeah, the.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Goal of these remedies exactly as Sarah said, is to
make a better experience for consumers. So imagine if you
could choose from four or five browsers, and maybe there's
one that really protects your data, maybe there's one that
gives you a better experience. If they're competing, then there
they've got more incentive to try to get your eyeballs
and get you to use them. So they're going to
(17:09):
be more creative and more innovative.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right, Well, we're already kind of getting a sense of
how the search landscape could be changing. On Wednesday, Apple's
senior vice president of Services testified at the Google trial
and he said that while he believes Google should remain
the default in their browser Safari, he also said that
the company is looking at revamping Safari to focus on
(17:32):
AI powered search engines. So for what did you make
of that? What does it say about Google's future as
sort of this dominant search player.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Well, it was concerning enough to send Google stock down.
The market is recognizing that if Apple thinks that there's
a threat to Google's dominance, then there probably is one.
You know, the Apple is looking at other options including
they said Perplexity, Open Ai, these other chatbots that if
people have turned to you as their gateweight information on
the web. That said, we have to consider that Apple
(18:05):
has skin in the game here. They get twenty billion
dollars a year from Google to have Google be the
default on its search and on iPhones. And by framing
this Google deal as part of this very competitive landscape
where you know, it makes sense for Google to pay
Apple twenty billion dollars to be the default search on iPhones,
(18:30):
they're preserving that twenty billion in their balance sheet.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
What about the government, what are they taking away from
how these trials are going so far, and how might
it influence the future cases they might bring.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I mean, we've already seen these two landmark decisions against Google,
so that's already on precedent. We haven't seen this level
of a case since they tried to break up Microsoft.
What we have here potentially is a real game changer.
So if the government wins, they're going to be emboldened
and they're going to, you know, feel more confident about
pursuing other complex cases. And they have a ticket Master
(19:05):
case out there, they have the Apple case that's in progress,
they have an Amazon case, and they're also looking at
other sectors like healthcare, So there potentially could really be
a wave of more antitrust enforcement. If they lose, that
could probably have a chilling effect because these cases are long,
they're difficult, they're complex, they're costly, so we could really
(19:27):
see a sea change in either direction depending how these
cases go. Well.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Sarah, Sarah, thank you so much for being.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Here, Thanks for having me, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by Alex tie. It was edited
by Tracy Samuelson and Joshua Brustein. It was fact checked
by Rachel Lewis Chrisky and mixed and sound designed by
Alex Sugia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior
editor is Elizabeth Conso. Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver.
(20:01):
Our executive producer is Nicole beemsterbor Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
head of Podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure
to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen
to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Right now, in one
federal courthouse in DC, two of the world's biggest tech
companies are facing reckoning. On the second floor, Meta, the
company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is up against monopoly
(00:21):
charges filed by the Federal Trade Commission. And two floors
up is Google, which recently lost to anti trust cases
and is now awaiting a judgment that could lead to
a breakup of the company. Both cases are part of
the US government's growing anti trust enforcement push that's been
putting increasing pressure on big tech.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's kind of stunning that this is the one issue,
this anti tech sentiment. We know they're powerful, we need
to do something about it. That is like the most
bipartisan topic now and in the past ten years.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I want to say that's Sarah Fryer, a Bloomberg technology
editor who's been following these cases.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This is really driven a strange thread of collaboration between
Republicans and Democrats over the years, from the first Trump
administration to the Biden administration and now in the second
Trump administration. Trying to tie it all up with a bow.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Today on the show Big Tech Is on Trial, how
the monopoly claims against Google and Meta could reshape the
industry and the way we use the Internet for decades
to come. I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big
take from Bloomberg News. I am thrilled to be sitting
(01:43):
down with two of Bloomberg's eminent Sarah's. We have Sarah Fryer.
She's a technology editor for Bloomberg and the author of
No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram. Welcome Sarah, Thanks
for having me and Sarah Forden our second Sarah or
our third, depending on how you're counting. She oversees legal
news at Bloomberg, and she's been covering Google and its
(02:05):
court battles since twenty ten. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Sarah Fryer.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You've been on the tech beat for a while, and
you've traced how big tech companies have been under increasing
scrutiny in recent years, including in the anti trust space.
What led us to this moment? Why are Google and
Meta in court facing monopoly lawsuits at roughly the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I think it's a combination of a few really important things.
The government has gotten a lot smarter about the level
of power that these companies have and how they're wielding it.
A lot of the first awakening of these companies and
what they've done was centered around the consumer experience. It
was stuff around privacy, content moderation. You know, did they
(02:49):
let Russia manipulate the twenty sixteen presidential election? But these
anti trust trials over the years, the government's gotten really
smart about exactly what makes these companies tech. For Meta,
the trial centers around how Mark Zuckerberg built his empire,
literally the secret sauce of like why his company got
(03:10):
so big and powerful. The Google trial is centered around search,
their power and search and what they can do to
remedy what they've now declared to be an illegal monopoly power,
as well as attech, which is how they make most
of their revenues.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Just just take a step back and follow on what
Sarah Fryer said. Another reason it took a long time
to get here was that these companies are primarily offering
free services, and typically anti trust law had looked at
price and are things getting more expensive for consumers? So
they had to really revisit how they're looking at these companies.
And so what you have now are you two behemoth
(03:48):
tech platforms they're making goodzillions of dollars every year on
people's data and information, and so that sort of became
the new currency in these cases. And the government and
a trust of forcers have taken a long time to
study these markets, so both the search market and how
advertising works in search, and the social networking market, and
(04:12):
so it represents a longer term building of appreciating how
big and powerful these companies came and how unfettered they were.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Sarah Fordon, I want to take a closer look at
the Google trial. Judges have already ruled in two separate
cases that Google is a monopoly. One case involves Google Search,
the other is tied to the company's ad technology. As
you mentioned, we're now in the remedy stage of the
first trial, the one that involved Google search monopoly. So
what are the proposed remedies here?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, so that trial is now in its final week.
The judge's been hearing arguments from both sides, and the
DOJ wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser. That
is probably the most dramatic remedy proposal. And while Google
argues that has nothing to do with the harms in
this case and the monopoly over search, the government says
(05:07):
that the browser is really the gateway to the Internet,
and so that's vital for that to be opened up
to competition. The other thing that the government wants is
for Google to share data related to search queries. And
then the third area is the government wants a judge
to ban Google from doing any kind of exclusive search
agreements the way it had with Apple and with Samsung,
(05:29):
so that Google was the default browser and search engine
on people's smartphones.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So that's the search monopoly case, which is in its
final week. Can you explain big picture why the DOJ
believes Google has been anti competitive in its ad sales.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah. So this was a separate, a totally separate case
that was brought under the Biden administration. And this case
looks at the pipeline of technology that Google controls and
underpins its ability to serve ads on the web. And
over the years, it acquired a number of companies, including
one called double Click and one called ad Mold, which
(06:08):
allows it to control the whole transaction. And the issue
there is that it's not transparent at all. It's a
very opaque process, so nobody can actually see how the
prices are formed and how the decisions about the cost
of ads are made. It allows Google to collect what
the government calls in a monopoly rents, and that means
(06:30):
that publishers are making less money, and it means that
advertisers are spending more money, and those costs ultimately get
passed on to consumers. So the government is alleging that
this system, because it's so powerfully controlled by Google, really
is operating to the detriment of consumers.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Very broadly, and Sarah fryar, these cases are ostensibly at
their core about search and ad sales products and functions
that have been Google's core offerings for years, but AI
has also become a signific can factor here in these
cases too. Can you talk about how this case has
been looking at Google's investments in AI and how the
(07:09):
company might have to shift its strategy in the AI
space in the wake of these anti trust rulings.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
That's so key here, I mean in terms of AI.
The judge in this search case says he wants to
consider that in his remedy for this problem. And a
couple of things have come up in the case that
make Google look pretty bad. One is that they have
these very expensive deals with Samsung. Google said this on
(07:37):
the stand, they have these deals with Samsung to have
their Gemini AAI pre installed on phones. Now judges have
twice ruled those kinds of exclusive pre installed deals illegal.
Google's doing it anyway for the next big market. The
other thing that's really become clear in this remedies trial
is how Google already has such extreme step ahead in
(08:03):
the AI realm because of the data it has on
the search. If you are a website that has your
content index by Google Search, you are opting into being
used in Google's AI training. There's no way to opt
out of that, besides opting out of being discoverable on
Google Search, which is the government argue is basically equivalent
(08:24):
with the Internet, right.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, And if I can just jump in here, I mean,
the dj is extremely concerned that the advent of AI
could quickly allow Google to further entrench its monopoly. On
the other hand, they're trying to walk a very fine line.
They don't want to hold back like emerging technology either,
and so for example, they decided not to ban Google
(08:46):
from acting as an investor in new AI enterprises. So
Google as a VC investor to help start up new
AI ventures. They're going to let that go ahead because
they want Google to compete with Microsoft and Apple and
the others who are quickly developing.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Well, Sarah, I want to switch gears to talk about Meta.
While the US government has already won twice against Google,
the case against Meta is still ongoing right now, we're
about halfway through. Can you just help us understand what
landed Meta in court and what's been litigated so far.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
There is a strategy that the FTC is highlighting here
from Mark Zuckerberg and his way of growing companies. They're
concerned that he is seeing a competitor to his business
crop up, get traction, build their network effect, and out
of fear that his company will get overtaken by them
(09:45):
or lose some users to them, he just acquires them
or tries to copy them. And he's done this over
and over and over. So the two acquisitions that are
most in focus in this trial or the Instagram acquisition
in twenty twelve and then What's acquisition in twenty fourteen,
which was pretty much inspired by the success of the
Instagram acquisition. This is complicated for the FTC because at
(10:10):
the time, the FTC was given an opportunity to give
a stamp of approval on these acquisitions, and they said,
go forth, we you know, we're not going to challenge this,
And so Meta's trying to say, you know, you're trying
to speak has passed?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Does Meta still seem like it's going to win this case?
Have the dynamic shifted?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Well?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Meta would would say they're pretty confident. But I think
that the emails that have surfaced, it is true that
Zuckerberg and his leaders were constantly looking behind their shoulders
to see if anyone was catching up with them in
the race, and constantly trying to think, how can we
either crush them, buy them, build our own version of this.
(10:52):
So the FTC has been very good at showing that
the problem is their market definition for what they consider
to be metas monopoly. It's this kind of made up
category personal social networking. They say that in their market definition,
the social networks that Meta owns only compete with snap,
(11:15):
which makes Snapchat in MIUI, which is I don't even
I don't even know, I haven't heard of that one.
And if you're a modern user of social media, that's
kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Sarah Forden, what's your take?
Speaker 3 (11:28):
So the case all of these anti trust cases will
ultimately turn on what the judge accepts as the market definition,
and so here the FTC is arguing that meta occupies
dominates the space for personal social networking that's basically sharing
with friends and family. So when you want to share
something with friends and family, you'll go to Facebook. And
(11:51):
the key thing is going to be also what the competitors,
so medicaying, well, we compete with TikTok, we compete with
all these other platforms. The key thing is and be
what those competitors say about who they perceive as competition.
So are they competing with Facebook or are they just
doing their own thing?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
After the break the political jockeying behind the scenes of
these anti trust trials and what the case's outcomes could
mean for social media and search, I want to talk
about the politics and I want to talk about the
(12:32):
implications of these trials, Sarah Fordan anti trust enforcement of
big tech, as you both talked about, has been a
rare example of continuity across both the Biden and Trump administrations.
Can you explain the politics at play here?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah, what we're seeing is really a sea change in
antitrust enforcement that's built up over at least the last
ten plus years, and it's a shift whereby both Republicans
and Democrats have started to see corporate solidation broadly and
corporate power in the tech sector specifically really grow to
be very powerful. So the Democrats will look at consumer harm,
(13:11):
whereas the Republican started to see that these companies were
so powerful they felt they were a suppressing conservative speech.
And yet, even though they're coming from very different perspectives,
the one thing they agree on is that these companies
have gotten too big and too powerful, and it's time
to put some guardrails in place.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Sarah Friar, You've been tracking Mark Zuckerberg's relationship with Trump
and his lobbying efforts. Can you talk about whether they've failed.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Well. I think a lot of the big tech leaders
thought of Trump as a transactional president. They have been
to dinner with Trump, They've been to his inauguration, They've
donated to initiatives he cares about, and so that is
something that they hoped, especially Mark Zuckerberg, HOTE would help
(13:58):
them have an audience. Zuckerberg has had some luck in
getting Trump and JD Vance to talk about what Europe's
doing and saying that Europe shouldn't be holding back our
American tech companies. They have had some success in getting
the administration to agree that big tech in America should
(14:19):
be the winner of the global AI race, not those
companies in China, right, But it really hasn't worked on
anti trusts Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, like, they're still all
completely in the crosshairs on that topic. And Zuckerberg personally
tried to get Trump to let Meta settle this case
(14:42):
and the FTC and Trump weren't willing to go for it.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Well, I want to talk about what the outcomes of
these trials could mean for people who use the Internet
or use these social media and tech platforms. If Google
had to sell off Chrome, for example, or if the
metatrial doesn't go its way, what would that mean for
someone trying to make a search going on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I think that first of all, whatever happens is going
to take a long time to happen, because the resolution
of the trial will come and then Google will likely
appeal it, and then there's going to be some back
and forth. But Apple last week was forced to allow
app creators in its app store to receive payments in
(15:28):
other ways than through iPhones, and notoriously Apple takes a
large cut of the payments that go through the app store,
So this is going to hit them in terms of
their revenue. So I think we might see more things
like that, like little parts of their operations that seem
(15:51):
kind of, Oh, this is just the way it's always worked.
I'm used to this as a consumer, realizing that it
doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to
have our Chrome browser following us around the entire Internet
and tracking everything we do in every other website to
personalize our results. And with the FTC case, the most
(16:11):
dramatic possible outcome is a spin off of Instagram and
WhatsApp from Meta. That would be like, absolutely unheard of
in the history of the Internet that a deal that's
more than ten years old gets undone. I just can't
even imagine, because they have done so much on the
(16:31):
back end to integrate those products. Certainly they could disentangle them,
but they'd both fight very hard.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
But I guess the government's argument in all of these
cases is that it's better for consumers if there's more competition,
if there's less monopoly activity. That's kind of the core
of these arguments, right, Yeah, the.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Goal of these remedies exactly as Sarah said, is to
make a better experience for consumers. So imagine if you
could choose from four or five browsers, and maybe there's
one that really protects your data, maybe there's one that
gives you a better experience. If they're competing, then there
they've got more incentive to try to get your eyeballs
and get you to use them. So they're going to
(17:09):
be more creative and more innovative.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right, Well, we're already kind of getting a sense of
how the search landscape could be changing. On Wednesday, Apple's
senior vice president of Services testified at the Google trial
and he said that while he believes Google should remain
the default in their browser Safari, he also said that
the company is looking at revamping Safari to focus on
(17:32):
AI powered search engines. So for what did you make
of that? What does it say about Google's future as
sort of this dominant search player.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Well, it was concerning enough to send Google stock down.
The market is recognizing that if Apple thinks that there's
a threat to Google's dominance, then there probably is one.
You know, the Apple is looking at other options including
they said Perplexity, Open Ai, these other chatbots that if
people have turned to you as their gateweight information on
the web. That said, we have to consider that Apple
(18:05):
has skin in the game here. They get twenty billion
dollars a year from Google to have Google be the
default on its search and on iPhones. And by framing
this Google deal as part of this very competitive landscape
where you know, it makes sense for Google to pay
Apple twenty billion dollars to be the default search on iPhones,
(18:30):
they're preserving that twenty billion in their balance sheet.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
What about the government, what are they taking away from
how these trials are going so far, and how might
it influence the future cases they might bring.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I mean, we've already seen these two landmark decisions against Google,
so that's already on precedent. We haven't seen this level
of a case since they tried to break up Microsoft.
What we have here potentially is a real game changer.
So if the government wins, they're going to be emboldened
and they're going to, you know, feel more confident about
pursuing other complex cases. And they have a ticket Master
(19:05):
case out there, they have the Apple case that's in progress,
they have an Amazon case, and they're also looking at
other sectors like healthcare, So there potentially could really be
a wave of more antitrust enforcement. If they lose, that
could probably have a chilling effect because these cases are long,
they're difficult, they're complex, they're costly, so we could really
(19:27):
see a sea change in either direction depending how these
cases go. Well.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Sarah, Sarah, thank you so much for being.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Here, Thanks for having me, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by Alex tie. It was edited
by Tracy Samuelson and Joshua Brustein. It was fact checked
by Rachel Lewis Chrisky and mixed and sound designed by
Alex Sugia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior
editor is Elizabeth Conso. Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver.
(20:01):
Our executive producer is Nicole beemsterbor Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
head of Podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure
to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen
to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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