Damian Rollison, Senior Director of Market Insights at SOCI, has described 2025 as the year of reckoning for Google and Meta, two of the world’s largest tech companies.
The expert’s comment followed the ruling that Google illegally monopolised key online advertising markets, clearing the way for potential antitrust-driven breakups of its ad tech business.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said Google “harmed Google’s publishing customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.”
Attorney General Pamela Bondi stated that the Department of Justice will continue to take legal actions to protect Americans from “encroachments on free speech and free markets by tech companies.”
Rollison, in his reaction, said that Google has now been subject to adverse rulings in two antitrust cases — the one focused on Chrome and several other Alphabet divisions, and the new ruling on Google’s adtech business.
He noted that this year will be one where Google’s fate hangs in the balance, as the company stands to lose a great deal more in material terms if its ad business, its main source of revenue, is separated.
“As with Meta’s similar antitrust battle, we see that big tech is facing a reckoning this year as regulators get serious about its outsized influence in our economy and our cultural life,” Rollison said in a statement.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has accused Meta of holding an illegal monopoly regarding its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, with the FTC alleging that Meta used “buy or bury strategy.”
Rollison, however, warned that the remedies of forced divestiture are blunt instruments that may not achieve the desired ends, urging the U.S. authorities to take a cue from the regulations in Europe.
“Better regulation of the kind that is more highly developed in Europe, that protects consumer rights and increases the responsibility of big tech over its content and influence, would be felt by consumers as having a more meaningful impact,” Rollison added.
