The future of the Internet will be determined in a building in Washington, DC – and for six weeks, I watched it take place.
For much of this spring, the courthouse of E. Barrett Prettyman in downtown Washington, DC, burst with lawyers, journalists and interested spectators who are jostling between the weakly enlightened audience rooms that welcomed everyone from the richest men of Silicon Valley to federal workers dismissed and the civil servants aligned by the pigs who dismissed them. The sprawling courthouse, with an airy atrium in the middle and long, dark rooms which result from it, is the place where the cases involving government agencies often land, which meant that it hosted two of the country’s most consecutive technological cases, while fueling a gaple of unprecedented legal proceedings against the administration of President Donald.
Between mid-April and the end of May, judges James Boasberg and Amit Mehta supervised respectively Ftc c. Meta And US c. GoogleA pair of long -term antitrust proceedings that seek to divide two titans from Silicon Valley. During the same period, several DC judges – including Boasberg – had a complete case of cases related to the first 100 days of Trump in power, covering the attempt at the administration of immigrants in the mass phase, undressing the security authorization of law firms and dismissed thousands of federal workers. The first day of the Google test, a panel with a comically deformed arrow led visitors to their chosen antitrust case. He was quickly joined by instructions to the high -level hearing against Trump’s prescription against the law firm Jenner & Block. While the FTC lawyers called witnesses against Meta in a courtroom, a neighboring room hosted arguments to find out if Trump could dismiss two of the agency’s own commissioners.
My colleagues gathered around the flow while waiting for a Google witness, to see a defendant to jump from prison entering the box
For journalists, the weeks were an exercise in constant juggling. During the overlap of Google and Meta, I would arrive at long security lines which sometimes advanced in the small park which enjoys the courthouse, waiting to track down a media room which broadcast a video for journalists and avoid the audience rooms without electronics. I would occasionally introduce myself to discover that no piece existed, and in a small jostling of journalists, I would rush a few flights from spiral staircases to the courtroom, scribbling handwritten notes of the rear rows. One day, my colleagues gathered around the flow while waiting for a Google witness, to see a prison life defendant entering the box – in the short moment before journalists only realize Mehta did a quick break for a criminal audience, they wondered which high -level technological framework it was.
The leaders, for their part, were numerous. One day, a box of witnesses saw the meta-PDG Mark Zuckerberg praising the success of Instagram; A week later, the former colleague and co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, was seated there to describe him as a jealous boss. The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, would soon testify to a few floors, followed by the leaders of some of the largest rivals in Google, including Microsoft and Openai. For everyone, the issues were high. Judge Boasberg is responsible for determining whether Meta has built an illegal monopoly by encompassing Instagram and WhatsApp, while judge Mehta will decide if Google must turn his Chrome or union browser.
For the judges, the glove seemed completely exhausting. Boasberg, chief judge of the DC American district court, had been assigned to the Meta affair long before Trump took up his duties, but after the inauguration, he became one of the most frequented judges in America – supervising a challenge of use by the administration of the extraterrestrial enemy law to deport migrants, and a continuation of the administration of the administration of the administration of the administration of the administration of the administration Trump’s messaging application by Trump’s office. While I was ending a day of meta-process at 5 p.m., a new harvest of journalists arrived to cover Boasberg’s consideration of the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies, which Trump used to expel Venezuelan migrants in El Salvador. Apart from the courtroom, Boasberg aligned Trump attacks – which labeled him as a “radical left” and a “disorder and agitators” and called for his indictment.
During the Meta Trial, Boasberg appeared uniform – sometimes to the point of boredom. He rarely mentioned the rest of his file beyond the subtle references at his overflowing schedule; His interventions were clever, pointing out an in -depth understanding of the case. But he often sat with his head in his hand, sometimes encouraging lawyers to go from a particularly tedious line of questions. He used a lunch break in the meta-procès to file one of the most scathing legal decisions of the first Trump administration, accusing the administration of “deliberate contempt” for his temporary ban on expulsion flights to El Salvador, with a “probable cause” to find it in criminal chief.
At the end of the Meta Trial at the end of May, Boasberg seemed relieved when the last day ended. “I will make a welcome respite by thinking of this by then and when the first thesis will be due,” he told lawyers.
In 1998, E. Barrett Prettyman’s courthouse welcomed another technology giant fighting for his life: Microsoft. US c. Microsoft was a historic monopoly affair which determined that the company had illegally exercised its domination over intel compatible PC operating systems to write threats to its monopoly, including emerging web browsers like Netscape. But in the wake of this case and subsequent regulations, regulators have adopted a practical approach to the next generation of technological companies. It would take two decades to the government to return to the battlefield – until 2020, when the cases against Meta and Google were deposited.
The research and social networking landscape has radically changed over the past five years, with the rise of Tiktok and generative AI. But Zeitgeist also has the zeitgeist around technology. While Silicon Valley remains politically besieged, the objective of a more aggressive antitrust application has won bipartisan support.
At the same time, there is an increasing fear of foreign competition, in particular Tiktok, which appeared in the same courthouse last year to plead against a national ban (since a delay). The company found itself there as a witness during the Meta trial, where lawyers confronted a tiktok frame with statements made during its fight in 2024.
These weeks of testimony from the courthouse have helped to shed light on countless decisions that have made the technological world as we know it
Inside the courthouse, it was easy to forget everything that was going on in Washington – until it was not. I was removed from the daily buffoonemeries of the Elon Musk government’s effectiveness department (DOGE) hacking the federal workforce, but cases concerning its work – including the postponement of the Consumer Financial Protection Office (CFPB) – continued to be wound by the Court. During a break on the fourth day of the Meta trial and days before the start of Google, I obtained a New York Times Pushing the notification by returning from the bathroom, telling me that the judge of Virginie Leonie Brinkema had ruled against Google in the antitrust ad-tech case separated from the doj. I went back to the media room and I found several of my colleagues from other points of sale already in the corridor by writing their stories. Of courseWe committed, a decision we expected month There is falling now.
The decisions in Google and Meta Trials of this spring will probably take months to arrive, and their benefits will probably not be seen for years. But these weeks of testimony from courthouses have helped to shed light on countless decisions that have made the world of technology as we know it. In the early 2010s, Facebook leaders expressed their fears that Google could buy WhatsApp and group it with Android, giving themselves a workforce on mobile messaging. With the context of the Google test, this fear seems premonitory – the company has cemented its search domination by doing the manufacturers of Android phones preinstall its search engine in the same way.
It is also possible to see the form of the giants so as not to increase yet. If judge Mehta orders Google to sell Chrome, several witnesses said they would be more than happy to buy it, including Yahoo, Perplexity and Openai. The historic antitrust trial of the Ministry of Justice against Microsoft is widely recognized for having opened the technological industry for innovative players like Google, and a quarter of a century later, there is hope that something similar could happen for new businesses today. However, it seems just as possible as during another decade or two, we will be back in this same courthouse, hearing the government affirming that they have nailed the doors again.
