It was a quarter of a century ago when the court seriously considered the wisdom of disbanding a giant technology company after it was discovered that Microsoft had illegally curtailed competition for personal computer software.

A U.S. District Judge said Microsoft forced it to split into two, and forced its exclusive window operating system to separate its office productivity products and other software. However, the Court of Appeals abandoned the order, calling it a “relief imposed with great care because it is rarely certain of its long-term effectiveness.”

This month’s pair of landmark lawsuits in two courtrooms in Washington, the issue of possibly potentially disbanding a large tech company is once again on the judicial table.

In an antitrust trial that began Monday, the Federal Trade Commission alleged that Meta maintained an illegal monopoly on social media through its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. The agency is trying to force Meta to sell both. Next week, in another proceeding, federal judges will hear debate from the Department of Justice about why the courts are disbanding Google to improve the company’s monopoly in internet searches.

“We’re a great leader in our efforts to help people understand how we’re doing,” said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the FTC.

For generations, courts have faced the challenges of what to do in major antitrust laws after it was discovered that the dominant company was engaged in anticompetitive behavior. In a Supreme Court decision in 1947, Judge Robert H. Jackson wrote that if the court’s solution did not open the market for competition, the government would remember that “we won the lawsuit and lost the cause.”

However, while the court’s decision is based on examining past facts, its remedies look to the future. The goal is not to thwart the market, but to free it and create a competitive environment that brings new ideas, new companies, more innovations, lower prices.

The challenge is to take on new importance as regulators have a huge drive to curb the tech giant in a series of antitrust laws that oppose power beyond communication, commerce and information.

In another lawsuit against Google, the Department of Justice awaits a judge’s decision regarding the company’s superiority in advertising technology. The department also sued Apple for its tactics to protect the favorable iPhone franchise. The FTC sued Amazon, saying it illegally protected its monopoly in its online retail business from competition.

This wave of antitrust lawsuits, including appeals, could last for years. And if the government wins any of the cases, the judge could order a breakup – the worst outcome for the business.

History shows that these orders could be effective, antitrust experts said. However, the outcomes of improved competition are mixed.

Standard Oil, an energy giant founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870, was the decisive case of a progressive and unreliable era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That’s what the company was like Disbanded by the Supreme Court In 1911 it was divided into 34 entities that made up the original standard oil trust that controlled the production, refining, distribution and pricing of the oil industry. It initially helped the competition, but over time the trust’s descendants became their own oil giants, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

The AT&T split in the 1982 settlement followed a lengthy antitrust lawsuit by the Department of Justice, which accused the United States of illegally monopolying the US telecom market. The local telephone business was split into seven regional “babybell” companies, with the order opening a long-distance telephone and telephone equipment market, increasing competition and lowering prices.

In antitrust terminology, such “structural” solutions generally refer to division. But there is Steps other than forced sale It could form a market and stimulate competition, anti-trust experts said.

In 1969, IBM unlocked hardware from software after pressure from the government’s antitrust laws, which accused it of monopolizing the computer market at the time. The software will no longer be “free” included in the computer price. It helped Microsoft as the biggest winner to ignite the rise of the commercial software industry.

Microsoft avoided breaking up, but the final settlement in 2001 included a ban on contracts that essentially used Windows monopoly as a club by restricting computer manufacturers from distributing software from emerging rivals. That suppression has kept the door open to new competition in browser software and search. Google was a major beneficiary.

“These were strong, break-up-free relief packages that created more competition,” said Fiona Scott Morton, professor of economics at Yale School of Business Administration.

The next powerful tech company facing court scrutiny is Meta and Google.

On Monday, the FTC and Meta (formerly Facebook) issued their opening statement in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, then stood up. The essence of the government case is that Facebook has been extremely overpaid for Instagram and WhatsApp over a decade ago, killing them to protect the lucrative monopoly of social networking.

Meta replied that Instagram and WhatsApp have grown and flourished under their ownership. And the company argued that there was a lot of competition in the social networking market, including the rise of the Tiktok meteor.

If the government wins the meta case, antitrust experts said there is a high possibility of a relief measure.

In the same Washington court next week, Google is facing a relief phase in a lawsuit by the Department of Justice and a group of states over its internet search monopoly. In August, Judge Amit P. Mehta discovered that Google was keeping its search monopoly illegal.

To restore competition, the government has asked the court to order Google to sell popular web browsers and is prohibited from spin-off the smartphone operating system Android or make the service mandatory on Android phones. Chrome and Android are powerful distribution channels for Google search.

Google describes the government’s list as “a violently outboard proposal” that “goes beyond court decisions” and harms consumers by providing products that are inferior to consumers. The company also said it would appeal.

Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, was a White House advisor on technology and competition policy for the Biden administration, helping to break up Google and META cases.

“If you want to stir the pot, the structural solution is clean and essentially self-executive. You break up and leave,” he said. (Mr. Wu writes about the New York Times opinion section.)

However, every split order has been appealed, and today’s High Court appears to reflect skepticism in the Microsoft era.

In a rare unanimous decision in 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the National Association of College Athletics cannot use its market power to stop paying student-athletes. It was essentially a fixed wage price case and was decided entirely for the plaintiff.

However, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, who wrote for the court, derailed to create a broader point about antitrust judicial binding.

“In short, judges should never aim for that role to create poor “central planners,” he wrote.