US antitrust case: What lies ahead for Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon

The US government is sharpening its antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech. In a sign that formal inquiries could be forthcoming, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission last week divvied up antitrust oversight for Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. While the timing caught some by surprise, the companies have been preparing for this moment for a while, hiring lawyers and lobbyists and publicly making their case. History may be on their side: Corporate breakups are a significant, and rare, undertaking for the US government.

The last major breakup of a monopoly was AT&T in 1982. Microsoft was ordered split up by a federal judge in 2000 after the Justice Department sued the software company in 1998, a decision that was reversed on appeal.In the past few years, there has been a groundswell of calls to at least rein in, if not break up, technology companies that are seen by some as having become too big and powerful in many ways.