This paper examines three decades of US antitrust enforcement against Big Tech (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and, historically, Dell, IBM, Intel, and Qualcomm) through the shifting lenses of the Harvard, Chicago, Post-Chicago, and New Brandeisian schools. Using cases from 1994 to 2025, we show how enforcement by the DOJ and FTC has attempted to broaden beyond price to include service quality, innovation, privacy, and market structure, even as courts often hew to Chicago-style reasoning. The result is a strategic blending of New Brandeisian motivations paired with traditional consumer-welfare arguments. We then connect this trajectory to the economic dimension of digital sovereignty—the state’s legitimate control over the digital domain—arguing that the New Brandeisian approach accepts possible dampening of US platform competitiveness in the short term but believes it will strengthen it in the long run. A comparative analysis highlights the EU’s more overtly protectionist competition toolkit and China’s interventionist but domestically focused approach, including selective use of antitrust in geostrategic sectors. Finally, we assess the unsettled direction of US policy under the current administration: appointments and rhetoric signal continuity of active enforcement, yet emerging personalist dynamics risk inconsistent application. We conclude that outcomes in the pending cases—and the remedies chosen—will shape both the doctrinal balance between structural and price-based theories and the global distribution of digital power.
Hine et al. (2026) studied this question.