The Antitrust Revival: Inside the New War on Mergers
Three antitrust battles that defined the new era of merger enforcement: Google's default search deals, the JetBlue/Spirit Spirit Effect, and Microsoft's Activision fight.
"The default is the oxygen of the business. Without the default, there is no Google." The Biden administration's antitrust enforcers — Jonathan Kanter at the DOJ and Lina Khan at the FTC — launched the most aggressive merger enforcement campaign in decades. Three cases define the era: the Google search monopoly trial, the successful block of the JetBlue/Spirit merger, and the high-stakes fight over Microsoft's Activision acquisition. The internal documents, trial testimony, and court rulings from these cases reveal a fundamental shift in how the government thinks about competition.
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- Thread 1: Google's Default Search Deals
- Thread 2: The "Spirit Effect" — Why Low-Cost Carriers Matter
- Thread 3: Microsoft's Activision Fight — The Merger That Survived
- Thread 4: The FTC's Lina Khan on the New Approach