Inside the courthouse that resumes the future of the Internet

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, covering the administration’s attempt to deport immigrants, Security deputy law firms and dismiss thousands of federal workers. The first day of the Google test, a Sign with a comic arrow Directed visitors to their chosen antitrust case. He was soon joined by the directions at the large -scale hearing Trump’s order against the law firm Jenner & Block. While the lawyers of the FTC called witnesses against Meta in a courtroom, a neighboring room welcomed arguments on the question of whether Trump could Fire two of the agency’s own commissioners.

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 Meta-chef Mark Zuckerberg praising Instagram’s success; A week later, the former colleague and co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, had stayed there Describe it as a jealous boss. The CEO of Google Sundar Pichai would soon testify A few floors, followed by the leaders of some of the biggest google rivals, including Microsoft and Openai. For everyone, the issues were high. Judge Boasberg is responsible for determining If Meta has built an illegal monopoly By encompassing Instagram and WhatsApp, while judge Mehta will decide if Google must Turn your chrome or union browser. Its search data.

For the judges, the glove seemed completely exhausting. Boasberg, chief judge of the American DC 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 enemies law to deport migrants, and a prosecution of the prosecution of the law on the law Use of the encrypted messaging application signal communicate attack plans. While I ended a meta-care day at 5 p.m., a new harvest of journalists arrived to cover the Boasberg’s consideration of the extraterrestrial enemy law, 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-try to deposit One of the most scathing legal decisions From the first Trump administration, accusing the administration of “voluntary contempt” for its temporary ban on expulsion flights to Salvador, with a “probable cause” to find it in criminal contempt.

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 won Bipartite support.

At the same time, there is an increasing fear of foreign competition, in particular of Tiktok, which appeared in the same courthouse last year to plead against A (since the delay) National ban. The company found itself there as a witness during the Meta trial, where lawyers Faced with a tiktok executive with statements Made during the failure of his fight in 2024.

Inside the courthouse, it was easy to forget everything that was going on in Washington – until it was not. I have been removed from daily buffoonemeries from the Elon Musk Government Department (DOGE) hacking the federal workforce, but the cases on its work – Including to eliminate the financial protection office of consumer (CFPB) – continued to wrap in 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 governed 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,, Perplexityand 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.