Competition Law in Practice
Big Tech on Trial Around the World
Landmark competition cases against large technology firms in the United States and Europe, and what their outcomes mean for consumers and rivals.
Over the past decade, competition authorities around the world have brought major cases against the largest technology companies. These cases shape the digital economy used by billions of people.
The United States: Google Search
In August 2024, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search, partly through paying billions of dollars a year to companies such as Apple and Samsung to be the default search engine on their devices and browsers.
In September 2025, the judge decided on remedies. He declined the government’s request to force Google to sell its Chrome browser, but barred exclusive default contracts and required Google to share some search data with rivals. The rise of AI chatbots as alternative ways to search influenced the decision.
The United States: other cases
U.S. authorities have also brought cases against Google’s advertising technology business, Apple over smartphone practices, Amazon over its treatment of sellers, and Meta over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Outcomes have been mixed, and several cases remain in progress.
The European Union
The European Commission has been an active enforcer:
- Google Shopping (2017): about 2.4 billion euros for favouring its own comparison shopping service, upheld by the EU’s top court in 2024.
- Google Android (2018): over 4 billion euros.
- Apple (2024): about 1.8 billion euros over rules that stopped music streaming apps from telling users about cheaper subscription options outside the App Store.
Lessons from the cases
- Cases take many years, and technology moves quickly.
- Remedies are hard to design: breaking up companies is rare; behaviour changes are more common.
- Fines, even large ones, may be small relative to profits.
- These challenges help explain the move toward ex ante rules.
India’s role
The CCI has pursued its own cases against Google, Apple, Amazon, Flipkart and Meta’s WhatsApp, including over WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy.
Every time someone opens a new phone's browser and types a question, a default search engine answers. Google paid huge sums to be that default. The U.S. court found this helped Google keep rivals from gaining users and data. The remedy aims to give rivals a fairer chance to compete.
Fines punish past conduct, but changing market behaviour usually requires remedies such as ending exclusive contracts or enabling interoperability.
- A U.S. court ruled in 2024 that Google illegally maintained a search monopoly.
- The 2025 remedies barred exclusive default deals but did not force a Chrome sale.
- The EU has fined Google and Apple billions of euros.
- Slow cases and difficult remedies have encouraged new ex ante rules.
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