Introduction
The regulatory environment facing Big Tech in 2026 has one defining pattern: US courts keep finding that the largest platforms broke the law, then keep declining to break them up. Judges prefer behavioral remedies (conduct rules, data sharing, monitors) to structural remedies such as forced divestitures, while Europe has become the more aggressive enforcer and Washington threatens trade retaliation against it. Each development feeds directly into TMT M&A strategy: enforcement outcomes determine which acquisitions are achievable, which commitments buyers must offer, and how long review takes.
Courts Find Monopolies but Refuse Breakups
The template came from the Google search case. Judge Amit Mehta's September 2025 remedies decision refused to force a sale of Chrome or Android. Instead, a six-year judgment bans exclusive distribution contracts and requires Google to share parts of its search index and user-interaction data with qualified competitors, with Mehta pointing to generative AI as a force that could erode Google's position on its own. Both sides have appealed, the Justice Department seeking stronger relief, and in May 2026 Mehta declined to pause the data-sharing mandate, which takes effect only once a court-appointed technical committee sets standards.
The Google ad tech case confirmed the pattern. Judge Leonie Brinkema had ruled in April 2025 that Google illegally monopolized the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets. On September 2, 2026, she refused to make Google sell its AdX exchange or open-source its ad server's auction logic, and accepted most of the proposed conduct remedies instead: Google must stop requiring publishers on its ad server to use AdX and must give rival ad servers access to AdX bids, under six years of rules (the government sought fifteen) policed by a compliance monitor. The liability findings stand, and Google plans to appeal them. For the digital advertising ecosystem, the Google ad stack stays integrated but must interoperate with rivals.
- Behavioral Remedy vs. Structural Remedy
A structural remedy fixes a competition problem by changing ownership: a court or regulator orders the divestiture of a business or asset so that the market regains an independent competitor. A behavioral remedy (or conduct remedy) leaves ownership intact and imposes rules on how the company operates, such as bans on exclusive contracts, interoperability or data-sharing duties and a compliance monitor, usually for a fixed term. Structural remedies are cleaner once completed but disruptive to design; behavioral remedies avoid that disruption but need years of supervision.
The ad tech ruling was the third time in a row that a court rejected a US bid to break up a Big Tech company. Meta's case is on appeal, and the others will not reach trial before 2027:
| Case | Forum | 2026 outcome or next step | Remedy type |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOJ v. Google (search) | D.D.C., Judge Mehta | Six-year judgment under cross-appeal | Behavioral |
| DOJ v. Google (ad tech) | E.D. Va., Judge Brinkema | AdX sale rejected September 2 | Behavioral |
| FTC v. Meta | D.D.C., Judge Boasberg | FTC lost November 2025; appeal filed January 20 | None ordered |
| FTC v. Amazon | W.D. Wash., Judge Chun | Trial set for March 29, 2027 | Pending |
| DOJ v. Apple | D.N.J. | Dismissal denied June 2025; pretrial | Pending |
| App Store consumer class | N.D. Cal. | Decertified October 2025; on appeal | Damages claim stalled |
Meta won outright: Judge James Boasberg ruled that the FTC had not proven a current monopoly given competition from TikTok and YouTube, undercutting the killer acquisition theory behind the challenge to Instagram and WhatsApp, and the FTC filed its notice of appeal on January 20, 2026. The Amazon case, once slated for October 2026, keeps its March 29, 2027 trial date after Judge John Chun refused on October 9 to push it to June 2027.
On Apple, the private App Store class action never reached trial: Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decertified the class in October 2025, finding the damages model unreliable, and the plaintiffs are asking the Ninth Circuit to revive it. The Justice Department's "walled garden" case survived a motion to dismiss and is in pretrial proceedings. The enforcement pipeline remains intact under the Trump administration; what has changed is the endgame, with conduct over divestiture now looking like settled judicial practice.
The EU's Escalating DMA Enforcement
Europe enforces through regulation rather than litigation, and its penalties keep rising. In April 2025 the Commission issued the first Digital Markets Act (DMA) fines: EUR 500 million on Apple for App Store anti-steering rules and EUR 200 million on Meta for its "pay or consent" ad model. Google drew EUR 2.95 billion that September under EU antitrust rules for favouring its own ad tech, and X became the first company fined under the Digital Services Act (EUR 120 million, December 2025).
On July 23, 2026, the Commission fined Google EUR 890 million, the largest DMA penalty yet: EUR 460 million for ranking its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results above rivals in Search, the regime's first self-preferencing fine, and EUR 430 million for anti-steering restrictions in Google Play. The perimeter is widening too: in June 2026 the Commission reached a preliminary view that AWS and Azure should be designated under the DMA even though neither meets its quantitative thresholds.
- Self-Preferencing
Self-preferencing is the practice of a platform treating its own products more favourably than those of rivals that depend on it, for example ranking its own shopping results above competitors' in search. Article 6(5) of the EU's Digital Markets Act bans gatekeepers from ranking their own services above similar third-party services, so the Commission can fine the conduct without first proving market dominance, as traditional antitrust cases require.
Washington treats this enforcement as a trade dispute, because nearly every company the rules bite on is American.
The AI Act Timetable and State Enforcement
The EU AI Act was due to apply most of its remaining rules on August 2, 2026, but that date no longer means general applicability. The AI Omnibus, in force since July 27, 2026, deferred the high-risk obligations to December 2, 2027 for stand-alone systems in areas such as hiring and credit scoring, and to August 2, 2028 for AI embedded in regulated products. Transparency duties and the obligations on general-purpose AI models kept their original timetable. The delay buys time, not relief: compliance costs still feed into the valuation of AI companies and into AI Act representations in deal documents.
In the US, state attorneys general offer an alternative channel as federal cases end in conduct remedies. California's AB 325, effective January 1, 2026, amended the Cartwright Act to bar using or distributing a common pricing algorithm as part of a conspiracy, and California's own price-parity case against Amazon goes to trial on January 19, 2027, ten weeks before the FTC's. The result is a state-level patchwork that adds compliance cost for any platform operating nationally.
Impact on TMT M&A Strategy
- DMA Gatekeeper
A gatekeeper is a large digital platform designated by the European Commission under the Digital Markets Act as an important gateway between businesses and consumers, typically with EUR 7.5 billion in annual EEA turnover (or EUR 75 billion in market value) and 45 million monthly EU end users. Seven companies are designated: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft. Gatekeepers face up-front conduct obligations and must inform the Commission of every planned acquisition involving digital services, regardless of size.
The practical consequence of 2026 is that Big Tech acquisition capacity is limited less by breakup risk than by the friction of oversight. A platform under a conduct decree or DMA designation faces review of almost any deal it attempts, and the antitrust approval process increasingly turns on which behavioral commitments a buyer can credibly offer. Together, the US decrees and the DMA shape deal design in concrete ways:
For cross-border transactions, the US-EU divergence is the hardest variable to price: a deal can clear in Washington on conduct commitments and still trigger DMA obligations in Brussels.
