Big Tech on Trial: The Global Antitrust Wave Reshaping the Tech Industry in 2025-2026

The dream of Silicon Valley’s golden era — that technology companies could grow without limits, displace entire industries, and operate by their own rules — is colliding with a global regulatory reckoning in 2025 and 2026. Antitrust authorities in the United States, European Union, and United Kingdom have all made significant moves against the world’s most powerful technology companies, and the outcomes of ongoing cases could fundamentally reshape how the internet is built, who controls it, and who profits from it.

This is the most consequential period of tech antitrust enforcement since the US v. Microsoft case of the late 1990s. And this time, the stakes are even higher — because the companies being investigated don’t just run operating systems. They run the advertising infrastructure of the global economy, the platforms where billions spend their time, and increasingly, the AI systems that will mediate how humans access information.

The United States: Courts Are Deciding What Regulators Couldn’t

Google: The Landmark Antitrust Ruling

The most significant antitrust outcome of 2024-2025 was the US Department of Justice’s victory against Google in the general search antitrust case. Federal Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August 2024 that Google had maintained an illegal monopoly in general search and text advertising — the most consequential tech antitrust ruling since Microsoft.

The core violation: Google paid billions of dollars annually to Apple, Samsung, and browser makers to be the default search engine on their devices — not competing on merit, but using market power to pay for exclusivity.

Where we are in 2026:

• A technical committee is overseeing implementation of behavioral remedies for Google Search throughout 2026
• The DOJ initially sought divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser; the final remedies decision will test how aggressive courts are prepared to be
• A separate ruling in the Google adtech case found Google guilty of illegally monopolizing online advertising technology. The DOJ has requested divestiture of Google’s AdX advertising exchange — which would be the first forced divestiture of a major tech platform in US history
• A ruling requiring the AdX breakup would mark a genuine structural shift in how online advertising works

Amazon: Algorithmic Favoritism Challenge

In April 2025, a district court allowed a suit by the FTC and several states against Amazon, which alleges that Amazon systematically favors paid results and its own products in its marketplace — essentially taxing the merchants who depend on its platform while using those merchants’ data to compete against them.

The case is early in its proceedings but has significant implications for all platform businesses that operate as both marketplace and merchant.

Apple: The Epic Battle Continues

Apple’s ongoing battle with Epic Games — which began when Epic deliberately violated App Store payment rules to force a legal confrontation — continued into 2025. In December 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed that Apple committed civil contempt by willfully violating court orders regarding alternative payment systems for app developers.

Apple has been ordered to allow app developers to link to external payment methods — a requirement it has resisted and partially implemented in ways that critics call “malicious compliance.” The contempt ruling signals that courts have limited patience for Apple’s approach to implementing adverse rulings.

Microsoft: The AI Cloud Probe

The Trump administration’s FTC advanced a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s cloud, AI, and software businesses in 2025. The probe examines whether Microsoft has used its dominance in enterprise software (Windows, Office, Teams, Azure) to unfairly advantage its AI offerings (Copilot, Azure OpenAI Service) and to lock customers into its cloud platform.

This is particularly significant because Microsoft’s $10+ billion investment in OpenAI has blurred the line between software vendor and AI company — and the probe is asking whether that integration is anticompetitive.

Meta: The Instagram and WhatsApp Battle

In a significant victory for Meta, a federal judge in 2025 dismissed the FTC’s long-running antitrust challenge to Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The judge ruled that Meta is not a monopolist in social networking given competition from TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms.

This outcome — which seemed uncertain as recently as 2023 — suggests that US courts are applying a relatively high bar for proving social media monopoly claims, particularly when rapid market shifts (TikTok’s rise) have demonstrably affected competition dynamics.

The European Union: The Digital Markets Act Era Begins

While US antitrust cases move slowly through courts, the EU has a faster enforcement tool: the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which designated the largest tech companies as “gatekeepers” and imposed specific obligations on them in April 2023.

First-Ever DMA Fines

April 2025 marked the first enforcement action under the DMA:

• Apple: EUR 500 million fine for failing to comply with DMA obligations regarding its App Store. Apple was required to allow app developers to link to alternative payment methods and steer users to better deals outside the App Store — obligations it implemented in ways that regulators found insufficient.
• Meta: EUR 200 million fine for its “pay or consent” model for Facebook and Instagram. The EU ruled that forcing users to choose between paying for an ad-free service or consenting to personalized advertising violates the DMA’s requirement that gatekeepers obtain meaningful, specific consent.

The Google Advertising Fine

In September 2025, the European Commission fined Google EUR 2.95 billion — one of the largest antitrust fines in EU history — after finding that Google abused its dominant position in online advertising by systematically favoring its own adtech services over competitors in its advertising auction systems.

This aligns with (and predates) the US DOJ’s adtech findings, creating coordinated global pressure on Google’s advertising empire from multiple regulatory directions simultaneously.

The Google AI Content Investigation

In December 2025, the Commission opened a formal investigation into Google’s use of web content to train AI models — raising concerns that Google was scraping content from publishers without compensation and without giving them opt-out options.

This case sits at the intersection of antitrust and copyright law. If publishers can demonstrate that Google’s AI training advantage constitutes an abuse of market power, the implications for every major AI company that trains on internet data would be profound.

Meta WhatsApp and Third-Party AI

Also in December 2025, the Commission opened an investigation into Meta restricting access to WhatsApp for third-party AI providers — examining whether Meta is using its messaging dominance to foreclose competition in AI assistant services built on communication platforms.

UK Strategic Market Status

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) took its own major step in October 2025, confirming Strategic Market Status (SMS) designations for:

• Google: In general search and search advertising
• Apple: In mobile platforms (iOS, App Store)
• Google: In mobile platforms (Android, Play Store)

SMS designation under the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act gives the CMA significant powers to impose binding conduct requirements — similar to, but independent from, the EU DMA. The CMA is now in the process of imposing specific obligations on these companies.

The Global Picture: Antitrust Goes Multinational

The striking feature of 2025-2026 antitrust enforcement is its coordinated global character. For the first time, major cases against the same companies are advancing simultaneously in multiple jurisdictions:

Company	US Case Status	EU Action	UK Action
Google	Search remedies 2026; AdX divestiture sought	EUR 2.95B fine; AI content probe	SMS designation
Apple	App Store contempt ruling	EUR 500M DMA fine	SMS designation
Meta	FTC case dismissed	EUR 200M DMA fine; WhatsApp AI probe	Under review
Amazon	FTC suit advanced	Marketplace investigation	Under review
Microsoft	FTC cloud/AI probe	GPAI obligations under AI Act	Cloud investigation

This creates both regulatory complexity and, for the first time, genuine global accountability. Companies that win in one jurisdiction cannot simply relocate the abusive behavior.

What’s Actually at Stake

For Online Advertising

Google’s advertising empire — which generates the majority of Alphabet’s revenue — faces simultaneous challenges in the US and EU. If the DOJ achieves AdX divestiture and the EU fines continue, the online advertising business that funds most of the “free” internet could be structurally reorganized for the first time in 20 years.

For App Stores

Apple’s App Store model — taking 15-30% commission on all in-app purchases and controlling which apps can be distributed on iOS — is under challenge in virtually every major jurisdiction. DMA compliance is creating genuine alternative payment options in the EU; legal pressure in the US is slowly forcing more openness.

For AI Competition

The Microsoft probe and Google AI content investigation preview the next frontier of antitrust: AI-era competition law. Questions being asked:

• Does a company’s advantage in training data constitute an unfair competitive advantage?
• Should AI model providers who are vertically integrated (owning the model, the cloud, the applications) face structural separation requirements?
• How do you evaluate “AI market power” when the market is still forming?

The answers to these questions, being litigated now, will shape AI competition for decades.

The Corporate Response: Compliance, Appeals, and Lobbying

Tech companies have responded to antitrust pressure along predictable lines:

Legal challenges: Every significant fine is appealed. The EU’s Apple fine was immediately challenged. Google’s US search ruling is under ongoing legal challenge.

Minimum viable compliance: Companies implement the letter of requirements while preserving as much of their business model as possible. Apple’s implementation of DMA alternative payment requirements was widely criticized as designed to discourage developers from using the mandated alternatives.

Lobbying and narrative: Tech companies invest heavily in arguing that their services benefit consumers (lower prices, more convenience) and that antitrust action will harm innovation. These arguments resonate with some policymakers, particularly in the US.

Structural adjustments: Some changes are happening organically. Google has divested some smaller assets. Apple has opened certain APIs. Microsoft has restructured some Teams bundling in Europe.

What the Outcomes Mean for the Industry

If regulators achieve their goals — particularly structural remedies like the AdX divestiture or meaningful App Store opening — the tech industry faces:

1. Unbundling of integrated platforms: Search from advertising from distribution; model from cloud from application
2. Interoperability requirements: Dominant platforms forced to allow competitors to access their services
3. Data access: Competitors gaining access to data held by dominant platforms
4. Lower barriers to entry: New entrants able to compete without paying the “gatekeeper tax”

The optimistic view: a more competitive tech ecosystem that’s better for startups, advertisers, publishers, and consumers.

The pessimistic view: Regulatory fragmentation that slows innovation, creates compliance costs that only incumbents can absorb, and hands competitive advantages to less-regulated Chinese players.

Conclusion

The global antitrust wave is no longer theoretical. Fines are being paid. Cases are being decided. The possibility of structural separation of major tech companies — once considered a far-left fantasy — is now a live legal question in the world’s largest courts.

Whether this antitrust wave produces genuine competition or merely expensive compliance exercises depends on the quality of remedies chosen, the will of enforcers to monitor compliance, and the speed of appeals processes.

What’s certain is that the assumption that Silicon Valley could operate outside the normal rules of market competition has definitively ended. The question now is not whether big tech will be regulated, but what shape regulation will take — and whether it will be coherent enough to actually work.