Other LanguagesIn recent years, Big Tech has been the focus of vigorous antitrust enforcement. Our office, along with many of our state and federal counterparts, is committed to protecting consumers from anticompetitive conduct in the Tech Industry, and has joined several of these cases.
Our Attorney General Bob Ferguson has spoken at length about his concerns with Big Tech. Bob spoke at the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University in March, 2021 about Big Tech regulation. Bob also talked about Big Tech, among other things, with Crosscut in November, 2020.
In late 2020, we, along with a bipartisan group of 48 attorneys’ general filed a lawsuit against Facebook for maintaining an unlawful monopoly in the personal social networking market. Facebook filed a motion to dismiss the states' complaint, and you can read the states' brief in opposition to that motion here. This action was dismissed mid-2021 and is currently on appeal in the DC Circuit. You can learn more about the basis for the lawsuit here.
Our office has filed two recent lawsuits against Google. In late 2020, Washington along with a coalition of 38 states filed a lawsuit against Google alleging the company illegally maintains its monopoly power over general search engines and related general search advertising markets. In 2021, Washington and 38 other state enforcers filed a second lawsuit against Google alleging that Google is excluding competition for mobile app distribution and in-app-payment services. You can learn more about these cases here and here.
Most recently, our office filed and resolved a lawsuit against Amazon, which shut down the Sold by Amazon third-party seller price-fixing program nationwide in early 2022. You can learn more about the basis for the lawsuit here.
For more information about our cases, please visit our cases page.
As a helpful resource, the Antitrust Division has prepared a presentation about Antitrust and the Tech Industry.