North America Antitrust Digest | April 2025

A quick look at the top headlines in Antitrust and Competition

1. Google Loses Ad Tech Case; Search Remedies Trial Begins

2. FTC Trial Against Meta Heats Up

3. President Trump Issues Competition EO

4. Mark Meador Takes Seat as FTC Commissioner

A breakdown of the latest news, moves and trends

Google Loses Ad Tech Case; Search Remedies Trial Begins

On April 17, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google illegally maintains monopolies in two online advertising markets and that the company’s actions “substantially harmed” both web publishers and users.

Specifically, Brinkema found that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market” and that the company “unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX)”.

Still, the decision was not a total loss for Google; Brinkema dismissed part of the case concerning general display ad tools and acquisitions like DoubleClick and Admeld. Google has also said it will appeal the parts of the case it lost.

Meanwhile, Brinkema has set a May 2 hearing to begin discussing remedies in the case, characteristic of the fast timelines out of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, AKA “Rocket Docket.”

The ads tech decision marks the second major antitrust ruling against Google in less than a year, following a ruling in August that the company illegally monopolized the internet search market. The remedy phase of that case started April 21. Remedies the government is seeking in the search trial include banning Google from locking in default status on third-party devices, requiring the company divest from its Chrome and Android businesses, and forcing Google to share search and ad data with rivals.

Google has pushed back on the DOJ’s proposals, labeling them “interventionist.” More specifically, Google has argued that it can keep the Chrome browser safer for consumers than other companies and that requiring Google to share data with certain competitors would provide its rivals access into proprietary technology. Instead, Google has suggested more flexible options such as allowing multiple default search engine agreements or letting partners preload apps without bundling Chrome or Search.

Witnesses expected to testify in this phase included Google competitors like Mozilla and DuckDuckGo, as well as companies who have expressed interest in buying its Chrome business such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Yahoo. Google executives, economists, and academics will also make appearances.

Watch this space: The trial phase concludes May 9, with closing arguments scheduled for May 30 and a final decision anticipated by August.

FTC Trial Against Meta Heats Up

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) trial against Meta platforms began April 14 in Washington, DC. The FTC is arguing that the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were part of a purposeful and anticompetitive strategy by Meta to “buy or bury” competitive threats to its social media dominance. The FTC is calling for Meta to divest the Instagram and WhatsApp apps to restore competition.

Meta had been aggressively lobbying the Trump Administration to avoid the antitrust trial, initially offering to pay $450 million before upping the offer to close to $1 billion to settle the case without going to trial, according to reports. Meta also donated $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration fund, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly met with President Trump three times since his inauguration.

Nevertheless, the FTC continued to pursue the case with FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson noting during an appearance on Morning with Maria before the start of the trial that President Trump began the suit against Meta in 2020, “and we're seeing it through today." Ferguson stated, “we have actual evidence that the transactions turned out to be anticompetitive and have given Facebook and Meta a tremendous amount of power, power that we saw on full display in 2020.”

In a pivotal moment for the FTC's case, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom took the stand on April 21, claiming that Instagram was deprived of essential resources following its acquisition by Meta in 2012. His remarks directly challenge earlier testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, who asserted that Meta supported Instagram’s growth by providing technological resources and investing in its development after the acquisition.

Still, the FTC has significant hurdles to clear to win its case, including that the acquisitions were previously approved by the agency. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing the case, also dismissed the FTC’s original case before allowing it to move forward after the agency reined its arguments.

The FTC must also prove that Meta holds a monopoly in the personal social networking space and that this dominance is harming competition despite growing competition from rivals like TikTok. Additionally, the FTC must demonstrate that Meta’s alleged monopoly limits competitive benefits for advertisers and harms consumers, mainly by allowing for weaker privacy protections and lower data security standards than would exist in a more competitive landscape. Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro has pushed back on the FTC’s arguments stating that “The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

More to come: The trial is scheduled to last eight weeks but could extend until as late as July.

Developments and deals to watch

President Trump Issues Competition EO

On October 9, President Trump issued an Executive Order Reducing Anti-Competitive Regulatory Barriers. The order directs agency heads to provide the FTC Chairman and Attorney General a list of all anti-competitive regulations, as well as a proposal to rescind or modify them as necessary, within 70 days.

The EO instructs federal agencies to identify any regulations that:

• create or facilitate the creation of monopolies in fact or by operation of law;

• create unnecessary barriers to entry for new market participants;

• limit competition between competing entities or have the effect of limiting competition between competing entities;

• create or facilitate licensure or accreditation requirements that unduly limit competition;

• unnecessarily burden the agency’s procurement processes, thereby limiting companies’ ability to compete for procurements; or

• otherwise impose anticompetitive restraints or distortions on the operation of the free market.

The order also calls on the FTC to solicit public input on regulations that impede competition that should be modified or repealed.

Why it Matters: The EO is an example of both President Trump’s deregulatory agenda and his administration’s emphasis on promoting competition. On March 27, the Department of Justice launched its own Anticompetitive Regulations Task Force to “advocate for the elimination of anticompetitive state and federal laws and regulations that undermine free market competition and harm consumers, workers, and businesses.” The DOJ task force is particularly focused on “markets that have the greatest impact on American households” such as housing, transportation, food and agriculture, and energy.

If the Trump Administration does ultimately modify or repeal regulations, it could lead to legal challenges from impacted businesses. As with much of President Trump’s regulatory agenda, the fate of any such challenges would ultimately be decided over time in court.

Essential insights and analysis

Mark Meador Takes Seat as FTC Commissioner

On April 10, Mark Meador was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be FTC Commissioner by a party-line vote of 50-46, with four Senators not voting.

Meador’s confirmation puts the current makeup of the FTC at a 3-0 Republican majority, with fired Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya suing the Administration over their dismissals. During a recent panel at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington, DC, both Slaughter and Bedoya stated that they intend to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court and believe that they will win. As we have noted in previous editions of this newsletter, at issue is a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey’s Executor, which limits the ability of the President to fire the heads of independent agencies.