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Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
(darkfriend.social)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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This is just the fight for the preliminary injunction. The FTC can still use antitrust proceedings to prevent/unwind the merger.
We often forget that big companies have been broken up before.
When was the last time that happened? It's not really a thing anymore in our current environment.
According to this article, in the US, it looks like 1982. It was AT&T. But it looks like they are currently trying to break up Meta.
I thought Microsoft had split too, but they mention that in the article and say they never actually split. I thought Intel was also split at one point, but it's not listed here, so I'm probably wrong.
Antitrust suits result in more varied options than just breaking a company up. Microsoft had to have certain aspects of it's operations supervised by the Department of Justice for years, and had to make mandatory changes with respect to browser bundling that only ended with Windows 10/11.
Intel has settled some antitrust actions -- namely lawsuits by AMD -- with money and cross-licensing agreements. They've spun off some divisions and operations over the years but none forced that I can recall.
Microsoft lost an antitrust lawsuit a long time ago regarding making internet explorer a required part of Windows, so they had to allow other browsers in Windows for competition's sake, but they didn't get broken up. That might be what you are thinking of. I can't think of anything Intel related though.