So far, the government hasn’t tried to break up Live Nation. But it has sued Google and Amazon.
In September, the Justice Department took Google to court, accusing it of abusing its power over online searches to throttle competition. The case centers on whether Google squashed other search engines by paying Apple and other companies to make Google the default on the iPhone as well as on other devices and platforms. In legal filings, the Justice Department has argued that Google maintained a monopoly through such agreements, making it harder for consumers to use other search engines. Google has said that its deals with Apple and others weren’t exclusive and that consumers could alter the default settings on their devices to choose alternative platforms.
Soon after, the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states sued Amazon, accusing the company of using illegal tactics to control online shopping in ways that stifled competition and raised prices for consumers and costs to sellers. Amazon maintains that regulators misunderstand how the retail industry operates and how its policies benefit consumers and sellers.
“Amazon may not be the small business it once was,” the company said in a statement, “but we’re still just a piece of a massive and robust retail market with numerous options for consumers and sellers.”
This year, the Justice Department could also file an antitrust case taking aim at Apple’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone, experts say.
Government victories in some of these lawsuits could change these companies’ business practices or lead to their breakup. But if the tech companies win, the suits could act as a referendum on increasingly aggressive government regulators and raise questions about the efficacy of century-old antitrust laws, says Bill Baer, a former top antitrust official at the Justice Department.
“It is a test of whether our current antitrust laws,” he says, “can adapt to markets that are susceptible to monopolization in the 21st century.”