Melodi Dinçer is Policy Counsel for the Tech Justice Law Project.

April’s Legal Landscape: Trust Busting Big Tech

This roundup gathers and briefly analyzes tech-related cases across a variety of legal issues, focusing this month on antitrust cases against big tech across the globe. The Tech Justice Law Project (TJLP) tracks these and other cases in US, federal, state, and international courts in this regularly updated litigation tracker.

If you would like to learn more about new cases and developments directly from the people involved, join TJLP for our tech litigation webinar series! On May 5th from 1:30-2:30 pm ET, we will explore the NetChoice v. Bonta cases challenging two California laws that attempt to make social media platforms safer for minors – the Age-Appropriate Design Code and the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act. Please RSVP here to receive further information about the event.

Read on to learn more about April developments in tech litigation.

“A” is for April and Antitrust Enforcement

Actions challenging Google’s monopolies

April has brought forth more than just seasonal allergies. This month’s biggest developments —both in the US and abroad—come from governments’ attempts to rein in Big Tech’s monopoly power. First, Google may have to fundamentally reshape its business structure in the coming years after losing both the US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s adtech and search monopoly lawsuits. Second, Meta and Apple became the first companies penalized under the Digital Markets Act after the European Commission found both companies violated the law, fining them just under 1 billion euros combined.

On April 17, a federal judge ruled that Google holds an unlawful monopoly over the adtech market in violation of the antitrust law, specifically Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. In her detailed decision, Judge Brinkema found Google intentionally acquired and maintained control over the software used by publishers to manage online ads, as well as the exchanges used to buy and sell them—determining that between 2018 and 2022, Google held a whopping 91 to 93.5% of the global market share in publisher ad-serving markets.

This monumental decision represents another big loss for Google, which was previously found to violate antitrust law for monopolistic practices in the online search market in August 2024. In a nearly 300-page decision, the federal judge in that case concluded that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” noting that the company did not “achieve[] [search] market dominance by happenstance” but strove to build a high-quality search engine so good—with distribution agreements so widespread—that they had “reduced the incentive to invest and innovate in search” by other companies.

With both liability cases now concluded, Google faces potentially overlapping remedies. The courts will have to decide how to change Google’s organizational and business practices to make the adtech and search markets more competitive after decades of dominance. The remedies in both cases may be mutually reinforcing in ways that can reshape the online landscape dramatically. For example, if Judge Mehta in the Google search case orders Google to keep its search product separate from other operations while Judge Brinkema in the Google adtech case orders Google to divest from its ad tech assets like DoubleClick, Google will no longer be able to use its search data to inform its ad decisions or use its ad products to promote its own search services. While the next phase of these lawsuits may lead to better competition and innovation, they do not touch Google’s emerging dominance in generative AI, especially when combined with online search and advertising.

On April 16, Google was also hit with a £5 billion ($6.6 billion) class action lawsuit in the UK representing thousands of businesses that allege Google maintains an unlawful monopoly in search. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority also began investigating Google’s search market status earlier this year. And in March, the European Commission published preliminary findings that Google’s parent company Alphabet violated European competition law by favoring its own search functions over rivals’. In response to the UK government’s investigation, a company spokesperson argued that “[c]onsumers and advertisers use Google because it is helpful, not because there are no alternatives.” That argument may have worked in the past, but the DOJ’s success here in the US, as well as increased global scrutiny, suggests that Google may be fighting a losing battle.

Lastly on April 15, the Japan Fair Trade Commission issued a cease and desist order against Google as part of a years-long investigation into the company’s potential violations of Japan’s Antimonopoly Act. The order targets Google’s conduct of requiring Android device manufacturers to prioritize Google’s own search apps and services through restrictive licensing agreements. Under Japan’s law, Google’s conduct violates a ban on businesses trading on restrictive terms that unfairly limit how trade partners–here, Android device manufacturers–choose to conduct their businesses.

In a similar vein, on April 21, the Competition Commission of India ruled that Google violated the country’s Competition Act by attempting to create a monopoly in the smart TV market. India is one of Google’s biggest target markets, and the Commission found that Google was “misusing its dominant position” by requiring smart TV manufacturers and sellers to pre-install Google’s Android operating system, Google Play Store, and other related apps pursuant to legal agreements. These practices disincentivize smaller companies from developing alternative operating systems or modifying existing ones for Android smart TVs. As a result of this ruling, smart TV manufacturers and sellers throughout India will no longer be forced to use the Android OS or any of Google’s apps by default. The order extends this release “beyond smart TVs,” potentially reaching other devices like “smartwatches and mobile phones” as well.

Actions against Apple’s and Meta’s monopolies

Google is by no means the only big tech company facing a 21st-century version of trust-busting. On April 23, the European Commission issued its first non-compliance decisions under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), concluding investigations into Alphabet, Apple, and Meta opened in March 2024. The EU Commission found Apple and Meta were both non-compliant with the DMA and fined them €500 million ($570 million) and €200 million ($230 million), respectively.

The Commission found Apple violated the DMA by restricting how app developers could communicate with customers about alternative offers outside of the App Store. The decision means that app developers using the App Store will be able to inform customers of alternative payment methods and “steer” them off Apple’s platform free of charge, removing Apple’s restrictions limiting app developers from using alternative distribution channels. The Commission has ordered Apple to remove these technical and commercial restrictions and refrain from future conduct that will have the same effect.

For Meta, the Commission found the company’s data and advertising policies to be in violation of the DMA. After the DMA went into effect, EU users of Facebook and Instagram were required to choose between consenting to combine personal data across the two services for use by the company, including to deliver targeted advertising, or paying a monthly subscription fee to opt out of those practices. Under the DMA, platforms must secure users’ consent to combine personal data between services, and those who do not consent must be offered a less-personalized but equivalent alternative.

By adopting this binary “Consent or Pay” model, Meta failed to comply with the law. Last year, following months of back-and-forth with the Commission, Meta had introduced another version of the platform that allegedly uses less personal detail to target ads – but the Commission has yet to decide whether this update is enough to comply with the DMA. Finally, the Commission found that Meta’s Facebook Marketplace is not subject to the DMA, as its less than 10,000 business users in 2024 failed to meet the law’s threshold for application.

This activity in Europe parallels the intense legal scrutiny US courts have applied to Meta this month. Back in 2020, the FTC sued the company for anticompetitive conduct in its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram in violation of the FTC Act. In the suit, the FTC alleges Meta failed to develop mobile features for Facebook to keep up with the market, resorting instead to an illegal “buy-or-bury” scheme where it acquired competitors with popular mobile features that succeeded where Facebook’s had failed. Furthermore, the company lured app developers to the platform, tracked their successes, and then buried them when their products became competitive threats. After getting rid of its competition throughout the 2010s, Facebook was able to strengthen its powerful adtech model and leverage its dominant position to lock users into continuing to use Meta’s apps.

Five years after the FTC filed the lawsuit, the case is finally on trial in federal court. On April 14, Mark Zuckerberg testified and tried to defend against allegations that Facebook had bought Instagram and WhatsApp to eliminate competition in mobile markets. During his testimony, the lawyers walked him through a “graveyard of dead apps” that had challenged Facebook’s business interests throughout the 2010s—a period where advances in smartphones and their increasing ubiquity dovetailed with aggressive venture capital funding, creating a surge in mobile app development. The trial will continue over the next two months, concluding on July 3.

Beyond Antitrust, Tech Companies Face New Consumer Protection Lawsuits

While companies like Google, Apple, and Meta face antitrust scrutiny globally, other companies are facing new lawsuits alleging harms to consumers.

The FTC sued Uber on April 21 over allegedly deceptive billing and subscription upgrading practices. The claims revolve around Uber One, a subscription-based program that gives customers access to and benefits for both Uber and Uber Eats services. According to the FTC, customers are deceived upon enrollment when they are promised monthly savings that do not account for the cost of subscription and, worse, when they are enrolled without consent and even charged without having an Uber account. Further, customers are deceived when billed, as Uber charges them before the billing date, and when they try to cancel, which Uber makes extremely difficult. Ironically, the same Commissioners who voted to sue Uber for these practices also voted against the FTC’s “click-to-cancel” rule requiring companies to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to start them. The rule will nevertheless become effective on May 14.

On April 17, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin sued Discord, an instant-messaging platform used by millions of children regularly, over certain design features and default settings that put children at risk of harm. Specifically, the Complaint alleges that the platform is designed to maximize interactions among users, allowing all users, regardless of age, to receive friend requests from anyone else on the app. Once connected, users can then exchange private messages directly. According to the NJ AG, these design choices “make it so that anyone can gain direct, private access to a child user with just a few clicks.” The Complaint alleges that Discord intentionally mislead parents and children-users on two fronts: (1) that Discord’s “Safe Direct Messaging” feature would automatically scan and delete all private messages containing explicit media content when it did not do so; (2) that Discord, pursuant to its Terms of Service, deceives people into thinking it enforced a minimum age requirement when it does not do so.

Other Developments

• Oral Arguments in AI Chatbot Case: On April 28, a federal court heard arguments in a highly publicized case involving AI chatbots. Defendants Character AI and others argued that the First Amendment barred the entire lawsuit, claiming that the platform’s users would be deprived of their rights to engage in expression with the chatbots if the lawsuit succeeded. Plaintiff, the mother of a deceased teenager who had developed a dependency on the chatbot product, argued that the First Amendment does not apply to genAI products like this one, which does not have an expressive intent when producing mathematically-determined outputs. The court is expected to rule on whether the case can go on in the coming weeks. (Garcia v. Character Technologies et al., U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, 6:24-cv-01903). Note: TJLP co- represents the plaintiff in this case with the Social Media Victims Center.
• Another GenAI Copyright Lawsuit: On April 24, online publisher Ziff Davis (ZDNet, PCMag, CNET, IGN, Lifehacker) sued OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement by using their various outlets’ articles as training data for OpenAI’s LLMs. (Ziff Davis, Inc. et al. v. OpenAI, Inc. et al., US District Court for the District of Delaware, No. 1:99-mc-09999).
• Meta’s Liability for Inciting Violence: On April 3, Kenya’s High Court ruled that the country’s courts have the authority to hear legal claims against Meta that Facebook’s algorithms promoted hateful material that intensified ethnic violence during the 2020-2022 civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigrayan region. The ruling is significant because of Kenya’s importance to Meta’s web-like corporate structure: although Meta is headquartered in northern California, the company outsources most of its human content moderation operations to other countries, including Kenya. This is the third lawsuit against Meta in Kenya, following an important ruling last year that Meta could be sued in Kenyan courts by former content moderators for the company.

The Tech Justice Law Project (TJLP) maintains a regularly updated litigation tracker gathering tech-related cases in the US, federal, state, and international courts. To help ensure TJLP’s tracker is as complete and up-to-date as possible, readers can use this form to suggest new cases or propose edits. TJLP also welcomes readers to provide additional information and suggestions for future roundups here. Send additional thoughts and suggestions to info@techjusticelaw.org.