In a year marked by dramatic legal and political shifts, the landscape for America’s largest tech companies is being reshaped in ways that could have lasting consequences for innovation, consumer privacy, and competition. As of August 2025, the U.S. government has notched a series of high-profile wins against Google and Meta, targeting their dominance in digital markets. Yet, even as courts and regulators inch closer to breaking up these tech titans, the underlying business model that powers much of the internet—surveillance advertising—remains largely untouched.
On July 31, a federal court of appeals delivered a significant blow to Google by upholding Epic Games’s antitrust victory. The court found that Google had monopolized the distribution of Android apps and payment processing within apps such as Fortnite, according to coverage from The Washington Post. This decision follows two other major legal victories for the U.S. government over the past year, successfully challenging Google’s stranglehold on online search and digital advertising tools. Judges Amit Mehta and Leonie Brinkema are now tasked with determining how to remedy these monopolies, with options on the table that could force Google to sell off major assets like its Chrome browser and the ad platform DoubleClick.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is also in the spotlight, as it pushes Judge James Boasberg to consider ordering Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp in an ongoing antitrust case. If successful, these actions could fundamentally alter the structure of two of the world’s most powerful tech companies. Yet, as The New York Times points out, even if these companies are forced to slim down, their lucrative surveillance advertising model would remain intact.
This business model, which involves tracking users’ online and offline activities to serve up highly targeted content, is at the heart of the modern internet. Surveillance advertising, intensified by advances in artificial intelligence, has been criticized for violating privacy, enabling discrimination, fueling addictive behaviors, and consuming vast amounts of energy and water. As the Electronic Privacy Information Center notes, companies "aggregate and sell personal information at industrial scale," not out of idle curiosity but to better understand and influence consumers’ needs and desires.
Google, for instance, knows the contents of users’ emails via Gmail, their interests through search, and even their physical movements through tools like Google Maps. Meta gathers its own trove of data through its social media platforms. And countless other firms participate in this digital surveillance economy, making it nearly impossible to participate fully in modern society without acquiescing to some level of corporate monitoring. "Being a full-fledged member of society in 2025 requires assenting to corporate surveillance, but this acquiescence should not be mistaken for consent," writes a privacy advocate cited by The Washington Post.
The problems with surveillance advertising are manifold. First, it infringes on fundamental privacy rights, as corporations often know more about individuals than their closest friends or partners. Opting out is rarely a real option; design choices by digital companies make it difficult to browse the internet, communicate, or engage in public life without being tracked.
Second, this model can facilitate illicit discrimination. While companies like Meta have agreed to stop allowing landlords to target tenants based on protected traits, researchers at the Consumer Federation of America warn that discrimination can persist through proxies like location. As a result, certain job and housing ads are more likely to be seen by whites and men than by people of color and women, perpetuating inequality even when explicit targeting is banned.
Third, surveillance advertising encourages the creation and promotion of addictive content. The more time users spend on platforms like YouTube or Facebook, the more data companies collect—and the more ads they can sell. Unlike traditional media, this dual motive of engagement and data collection sets digital giants apart and raises concerns about the societal impacts of their business strategies.
Fourth, the resource demands of this model are staggering. Data centers operated by Google, Meta, and others require enormous amounts of electricity and water. In one exurban county near Atlanta, a Meta data center reportedly accounts for 10 percent of total daily water consumption, contributing to water quality issues and higher rates for households. The explosive growth of AI has only compounded these demands, straining both the power grid and water supplies, and pulling highly skilled engineers into an arms race to perfect ad targeting algorithms.
Amid these challenges, the political winds have shifted. On August 15, President Donald Trump revoked former President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order on competition policy, signaling a move away from the regulatory scrutiny that had defined the previous administration’s approach to big tech. Biden’s order had included 72 initiatives aimed at increasing merger scrutiny and promoting competitive practices in online marketplaces, extending beyond the FTC and Department of Justice to agencies like the Department of Agriculture.
Trump’s revocation reflects a preference for less top-down regulatory control, with FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson applauding the move as a way to remove barriers to business growth and innovation. "Top-down competition regulations and agency rulemaking for implementing U.S. competition policy are a barrier to business growth and innovation," Ferguson stated, as reported by TechTarget. The FTC under the Trump administration has signaled that it will continue to enforce antitrust laws, but with a more favorable environment for mergers and acquisitions in the tech sector. Procedural obstacles to deals are expected to be eased, making it easier for tech giants to pursue acquisitions—though not without oversight.
However, experts like Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis, warn that this shift could embolden major tech players to pressure or acquire competitors, potentially raising costs and creating vendor lock-in, especially as companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia pour billions into AI development. "This was a market that needed more scrutiny around its anticompetitive behavior, not less," Pelz-Sharpe argued. He and others caution that, without adequate regulation, a handful of firms could end up controlling AI at scale, with serious consequences for competition and consumer choice.
While some aspects of Biden’s competition policy—such as updated FTC and DOJ merger guidelines—are expected to remain in place, the overall environment is shifting toward a lighter regulatory touch. William Kovacic, a competition law professor at The George Washington University, called the move "largely symbolic," but acknowledged that it reflects the administration’s urgency to distinguish itself from its predecessor. "They are doing something different there. But they are not simply opening the door and saying anything goes," Kovacic told TechTarget.
As judges weigh remedies that could break up Google and Meta, some advocates see potential benefits for journalism and independent media. Ending Google’s dominance over digital advertising tools could redirect ad dollars to newspapers and other outlets, supporting more robust reporting. Yet, the core mechanics of surveillance advertising—tracking users to deliver personalized marketing—would persist unless lawmakers take further action.
Some privacy advocates argue that legislators should focus next on curtailing surveillance advertising itself, not just the corporate structures that profit from it. They distinguish between context-based ads—like sports ticket promotions on a sports news site—and those based on continuous user tracking, calling for a ban on the latter while preserving the former as a means of supporting free digital content.
The coming months will reveal whether Congress and regulators have the appetite to tackle the business model that underpins much of the modern internet. For now, the battle lines are drawn, and the future of competition, privacy, and innovation in tech remains very much up for grabs.