Elon Musk kicked things off by announcing that he is now endorsing Donald Trump for US President.
And with a lot of money. Musk brought with him other tech billionaires, including the Winklevoss brothers — who previously co-founded Facebook — and Joe Lonsdale, founder of tracking software company Palantir.
Also supporting Trump is Marc Andreessen, who created the first Internet browser Netscape in the 1990s and now runs a venture capital firm.
At first glance, Musk and other tech billionaires’ commitment to Trump seems curious, if not contradictory.
Silicon Valley is traditionally considered to be left-leaning, liberal and green. They should logically be anti-Trump. Especially after the selection of JD Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate.
Vance has personally declared war on technologies designed to reduce CO2 emissions on several occasions. If it were up to him, Vance said in 2023, he would subsidize internal combustion cars, not electric ones, with taxpayer money. And not a single wind turbine would be built on American soil.
The tide is turning
So why is the tide turning for big tech in the United States? In early August, a judge in Washington ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain its monopoly on online search.
Specifically, the group is accused of paying tens of billions of dollars annually to smartphone giants Apple and Samsung to make Google the default search engine on their devices. “Google is a monopoly and has acted as such to maintain its position,” Judge Amit Mehta ruled in his ruling.
Almost 20 years after the antitrust court ruling against her Microsoftwhich narrowly escaped liquidation, this decision against Google is the first that could have significant consequences. For Google, first of all, because the Department of Justice is considering a possible breakup of the Alphabet group, its parent company, according to Bloomberg and the New York Times.
This could then affect all tech giants because the US common law system places great importance on res jurisprudence, which obliges judges to follow decisions previously made by courts.
In other words, this decision will likely affect other abuse of dominance lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta that will occur in the coming months and years.
Antitrust turnaround
The decision, which comes at the end of Joe Biden’s term, caps a presidency marked by a major “antitrust” tactic aimed at big tech. Although Biden was widely supported by Silicon Valley at the beginning of his presidency, once he entered the White House he took a hard line, systematically choosing people against the so-called GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) in key positions, asking them to act to stimulate competition and protect consumers from monopolies.
The Justice Department has launched a series of investigations into tech giants. In addition to Google, Apple has been accused of abusing its dominant position in the US smartphone market, where it holds a 65% market share.
Facebook is also in regulators’ sights for acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram, which would allow it to eliminate competitors first. But Amazon has also been accused of prioritizing its own products and preventing sellers using its platform from selling their cheaper products elsewhere. “The Biden administration has given antitrust a boost that we haven’t seen in 50 years,” undoing the lax approach to mergers and regulatory overreach that characterized the Trump administration, said Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law School professor who specializes in new technology law.
What will Kamala Harris do?
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, as a senator from California, has traditionally been close to the tech industry, and many doubt she will continue Biden’s policies if elected. But the tech giants don’t trust her and appear to prefer a second Trump presidency. They hope it signals a return to a more tech-friendly approach in the White House.