The defendants are Google and Meta, but the jury did not specify which one it was referring to.

Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl said the jury should reach a verdict if it can, adding that the case will have to be retried with a new set of jurors if it cannot reach an agreement.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified last month. Getty Images

The jury has been deliberating for over a week in a trial that involves a young woman who said she became addicted to Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram at a young age. AFP via Getty Images

The jury has been deliberating for over a week in a trial that involves a young woman who said she became addicted to Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram at a young age.

The outcome of her case could influence thousands of similar cases against the tech companies brought by parents, attorneys general and school districts.

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The leaders of Meta’s AI division are considering temporarily licensing Google’s Gemini to power its products in the wake of the lackluster results, the New York Times reported this week.

Internal Meta testing showed lackluster performance for its new “Avocado” AI model even after techies worked on it for months, anonymous sources told the Times.

Mark Zuckerberg is delaying the release of Meta’s next artificial intelligence model. Getty Images

Instead of rolling out this month, Avocado is reportedly expected to launch around May after it failed to measure up in terms of reasoning, coding and writing.

The setbacks come after Zuckerberg, 41, threw the kitchen sink at developing AI. Meta has spent billions hiring top AI talent and committed $600 billion to building data centers to power the tech. Meta projected in January it would spend as much as $135 billion this year alone — nearly twice the $72 billion it blew through last year developing AI.

Zuckerberg said in July that Meta’s new AI models would “push the frontier in the next year or so.”

The Times noted that Avocado outperformed Meta’s previous AI model and did better than Google’s Gemini 2.5 from March — but lagged behind Gemini 3.0 from November.

“I expect our first models will be good, but more importantly will show the rapid trajectory we’re on,” Zuckerberg said on an investor call in January.

Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer.  AFP via Getty Images

A Meta spokesperson said: “We’ll steadily push the frontier over the course of the year as we continue to release new models. We’re excited for people to see what we’ve been cooking very soon.”

AI efforts by Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, are being closely watched in the artificial intelligence arms race. Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are widely regarded as ahead in developing foundational AI models — the underlying technology for chatbots, video generators and coding tools. 

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Zuckerberg kicked his AI effort into overdrive after Meta’s previous model, Llama 4, fell short of expectations last year. To catch up, the company invested $14.3 billion in the startup Scale AI in June and made its 29-year-old chief executive, Alexandr Wang, its new chief AI officer.  

Wang helped assemble an AI lab within Meta called TBD Lab. The unit finished the first stage of Avocado’s development, called “pre-training,” at the end of last year, according to the Times. In January, it began the next phase, “post-training,” and set a target release date of mid-March.

Meta had been working on the new AI model, called Avocado, for months. dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

The only product Wang’s AI division has released so far is Vibes, an AI video app similar to OpenAI’s Sora.

TBD Lab, which has around 100 employees, has seen some turnover, with a handful of researchers departing before Avocado’s release, according to the report.

Meta’s top brass have reportedly debated whether or not its new AI model will be “open source,” meaning parts of its code would be available to other developers.

Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer. Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meta has long championed open source models, arguing that they help advance tech, while companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have said letting others build off their AI would pose safety risks.

The Times article detailed tensions between Wang and Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, and Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer. Disagreements reportedly centered on how new AI models should improve Meta’s ad business.

Meta wrote in a note to employees last week, which was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal, that it would create an AI team under Bosworth that would work with Wang.

Last week, Meta told employees it was creating an AI team under Bosworth that would work with Wang, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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The case, brought by plaintiff Jaylynn Dean, was the first trial – known as a “bellwether” – of more than 3,000 similar lawsuits against Uber that have been consolidated in federal court. Bellwether trials are used to test legal theories and help gauge the value of claims for possible settlements.

The jury found that the driver was an agent of Uber, so the company was responsible for his actions. They awarded Dean $8.5 million in compensatory damages but declined to award punitive damages. Attorneys for Dean had sought more than $140 million in damages.

The case, brought by plaintiff Jaylynn Dean, was the first trial – known as a “bellwether” – of more than 3,000 similar lawsuits against Uber that have been consolidated in federal court. REUTERS

In a statement, an Uber spokesperson noted that the jury rejected Dean’s other claims, that the company was negligent or that its safety systems were defective, adding that the company plans to appeal. “This verdict affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety,” the spokesperson said.

Sarah London, an attorney for Dean, said the verdict “validates the thousands of survivors who have come forward at great personal risk to demand accountability against Uber for its focus on profit over passenger safety.”

Uber shares fell 0.5% in extended trading following announcement of the verdict.

Dean, an Oklahoma resident, sued Uber in 2023, one month after her alleged assault in Arizona. She said Uber was aware of a wave of sexual assaults committed by its drivers, but had failed to take basic actions to improve the safety of its riders. Such assertions have long dogged the company, drawing headlines and congressional scrutiny.

Alexandra Walsh, an attorney for Dean, said during the trial’s closing arguments that Uber had marketed itself as a safe option for women traveling at night, particularly if they had been drinking.

An Uber spokesperson noted that the jury rejected Dean’s other claims, that the company was negligent or that its safety systems were defective, adding that the company plans to appeal. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, above. Getty Images

“Women know it’s a dangerous world. We know about the risk of sexual assault,” Walsh said. “They made us believe that this was a place that was safe from that.”

Uber says not responsible for driver actions

Uber, which has faced numerous safety controversies, including allegations of lax driver vetting and a culture critics said prioritized growth over passenger protection, has argued that it should not be held liable for criminal conduct by drivers who use its platform, saying that its background checks and disclosures about assaults are sufficient.

Uber has argued that it should not be held liable for criminal conduct by drivers who use its platform, saying that its background checks and disclosures about assaults are sufficient. Diego – stock.adobe.com

The company maintains that its drivers are independent contractors rather than employees, and that regardless of their classification it cannot be responsible for actions that fall outside the scope of what could reasonably be considered their duties.

“He had no criminal history. None,” Kim Bueno, an attorney for Uber, said of the driver during closing arguments, noting that he had 10,000 trips on the app and a nearly perfect rating from riders. “Was this foreseeable to Uber? And the answer to that has to be no.”

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Dean’s lawsuit said she was intoxicated when she hired an Uber driver to take her from her boyfriend’s home to her hotel.

The driver asked her harassing questions on the ride before stopping the car and raping her, Dean alleged in the lawsuit.

Uber is also facing more than 500 cases in California state court. Rival Lyft is facing similar lawsuits in both state and federal court, Tada Images – stock.adobe.com

US District Judge Charles Breyer, who normally sits on the bench in San Francisco, oversaw Dean’s case in Phoenix. Breyer is managing all of the similar federal cases against Uber, which have been centralized in his court in San Francisco.

The company is also facing more than 500 cases in California state court. In the only one of those cases to go to trial so far, a jury in September sided with Uber. The jury found that while the company had been negligent with its safety measures, that negligence was not a substantial factor in causing the woman’s harm.

Uber rival Lyft is facing similar lawsuits in both state and federal court, although there is no coordinated federal litigation for those claims. Shares of Lyft were down 1% after the verdict.

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Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI in 2015 but left in 2018 and now runs an AI company that competes with it.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, Calif., said at a hearing that there was “plenty of evidence” suggesting OpenAI’s leaders made assurances that its original nonprofit structure was going to be maintained.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk persuaded a judge to allow a jury trial on his allegations that ChatGPT maker OpenAI violated its founding mission in its high-profile restructuring to a for-profit entity. REUTERS

The judge said there were enough disputed facts to let a jury consider the claims at a trial scheduled for March, rather than decide the issues herself. She said she would issue a written order after the hearing that addresses OpenAI’s bid to throw out the case.

The court battle comes amid a broader showdown over dominance in the market for generative artificial intelligence. Musk’s xAI and its chatbot Grok are competing with OpenAI and other technology developers.

Musk is seeking unspecified monetary damages from what he calls “ill-gotten gains” by OpenAI.

OpenAI and Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk contends he contributed about $38 million — roughly 60% of OpenAI’s early funding — along with strategic guidance and credibility, based on assurances that the organization would remain a nonprofit dedicated to the public benefit.

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman (above) and Greg Brockman of plotting a for-profit switch to enrich themselves. REUTERS

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of plotting a for-profit switch to enrich themselves, culminating in multibillion-dollar deals with Microsoft and a recent restructuring.

OpenAI, Altman and Brockman have denied the claims, and they called Musk “a frustrated commercial competitor seeking to slow down a mission-driven market leader.”

Microsoft, which is also a defendant, urged Gonzalez Rogers to toss Musk’s claims against it. Above, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with Altman in 2023. Getty Images

Microsoft, which is also a defendant, urged Gonzalez Rogers to toss Musk’s claims against it. A lawyer for Microsoft said there was no evidence that the company “aided and abetted” OpenAI.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Lawyers for OpenAI at the hearing asked Gonzalez Rogers to enter judgment against Musk, contending that he had not shown enough of a factual basis to sustain his allegations including fraud and breach of contract.

OpenAI also contends that Musk failed to bring his allegations in a timely manner. Gonzalez Rogers said the jury would be asked to weigh whether the lawsuit was filed outside the statute of limitations.

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US District Judge Amit Mehta is expected to rule by August on the best way to rein in Google’s illegal dominance over online search after ruling last year that the company was a “monopolist.” The Justice Department, rather than merely punishing past misdeeds, wants Google and CEO Sundar Pichai to sell the Chrome web browser, among other remedies.

On May 6, a group of former DOJ and Federal Trade Commission antitrust enforcers submitted an amicus brief warning the federal judge against aggressive remedies. The lawyers said their brief was made “in support of neither party” and was intended to guide Mehta on following the “proper remedy standard.”

However, many of brief’s coauthors have direct or indirect links to Google and other Big Tech firms. That includes Joe Sims, who last year dismissed criticism of Google’s widespread evidence destruction as “silly,” and Willard Tom, who once defended Google in the high-profile antitrust lawsuit filed by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games.

Their arguments closely match those of the defense offered by Google, which claims the DOJ’s proposals go far beyond the bounds of antitrust law and that the court risks jeopardizing American AI leadership – and even national security.

The lawyers’ links to Big Tech raised alarms with Google’s critics, including Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project, who told The Post that it “speaks volumes that the only people rushing to Google’s defense are people paid by Google to care.”

Google faces a potential breakup of its business in the search trial. AP

“If Google is broken up, it will be a win for our digital economy that will lead to lower prices and more choices for consumers,” Haworth added.

Aside from a forced divestment of Chrome, the DOJ wants Google to share its search data with rivals. The agency has also asked Mehta to consider the potential impact of Google’s massive investments in AI-powered search when crafting any remedies.

Elsewhere, the feds want Google to be barred from paying billions to companies like Apple to ensure its search engine is set as the default option on most smartphones. They also propose a forced divestiture of Google’s Android software if initial remedies prove ineffective.

Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, is fighting to avoid a forced divestiture of Chrome. Getty Images

“We’ve long said the DOJ’s proposals go miles beyond the Court’s decision,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We appreciate that a wide range of experts, academics and businesses agree.”

An amicus brief – also known as a “friend of the court” brief – generally includes information that interested third parties want to flag for the judge’s consideration before reaching a verdict.

In a filing, the brief’s coauthors noted that they were not paid by any outside party and that no outside party had contributed to the writing.

Contributors included Tad Lipsky, who heads up the competition advocacy program at George Mason University’s Global Antitrust Institute – which has received millions in funding from Google and other Big Tech firms while frequently arguing for a light touch on antitrust enforcement.

Sims retired as a partner at law firm Jones Day in 2016. In July 2024, Jones Day successfully secured dismissal of a class-action suit accusing Google of antitrust violations tied to its Maps service.

Google faced criticism for destroying employee chat logs that it had been ordered to preserve. REUTERS

Last August, Sims raised eyebrows when he argued that Mehta was “silly” for criticizing Google over its deletion of employee chat logs during the DOJ’s search trial – in violation of court orders to preserve evidence.

“No firm has an obligation to create a paper trail for people or entities that may want to attack it,” Sims wrote on X. “If anything, it has a fiduciary obligation to do just the opposite.”

Tom is a former partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius who represented Google against “Fortnite” maker Epic Games’s antitrust lawsuit until his retirement in July 2022. Google eventually lost the suit in a bombshell ruling that has major implications for its “Google Play” app store.

Richard Parker previously represented Apple in the ebooks case bought the DOJ and currently works at Milbank Tweed, a firm that advised Google in the search trial and helped argue its ongoing appeal of the Epic Games verdict.

The brief notes that Parker contributed in “his personal capacity” and had “not worked for Google on this matter or any other matter.”

US District Judge Amit Mehta is pictured. AFP/Getty Images

Terry Calvani worked law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer from 2005 to 2019 – a period of time in which the firm served as an outside counsel for Google in several lawsuits. From 2020 to 2025, Calvini was a senior adviser at strategic communications firm Brunswick Group, which counts Google as a client.

Several enforcers who backed the amicus brief, including Sims and Lipsky, are listed as authors for Truth on the Market – a competition law-focused blog with close ties to the Big Tech-funded International Center for Law and Economics.

Jon Neuchterlein is a nonresident senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, which acknowledges on its website that it has received from donations from the likes of Google, Amazon, and Apple, among other tech firms.

Judge Mehta is expected to rule on potential remedies by August. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

From 2015 to 2024, Neuchterlein was a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin. During his tenure, the firm counted Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Intel among its clients.

In their brief, the antitrust lawyers urged Mehta to take “caution” when considering two elements of the DOJ’s proposal – the forced Chrome divestiture and the search data-sharing requirement – to avoid overstepping the bounds of antitrust law.

“Antitrust remedies in a monopoly maintenance case are intended to terminate the unlawful conduct and prevent its recurrence, and remediate proven harm to competition caused by the illegal conduct,” the brief said.

The lawyers added that remedies that “further than that or that are not narrowly designed to achieve those goals can undermine the purpose of the antitrust laws by inhibiting the very robust competition that those laws are intended to promote.”

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The Federal Trade Commission on Monday accused Meta of creating a monopoly that squelched competition by buying start-ups that stood in its way, kicking off a landmark antitrust trial that could dismantle a social media empire that has transformed how the world connects online.

In a packed courtroom in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, the F.T.C. opened its first antitrust trial under the Trump administration by arguing that Meta illegally cemented a monopoly in social networking by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp when they were tiny start-ups. Those actions were part of a “buy-or-bury strategy,” the F.T.C. said.

Ultimately, the purchases coalesced Meta’s power, depriving consumers of other social networking options and edging out competition, the government said.

“For more than 100 years, American public policy has insisted firms must compete if they want to succeed,” said Daniel Matheson, the F.T.C.’s lead litigator in the case, in his opening remarks. “The reason we are here is that Meta broke the deal.”

“They decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them,” he added.

Meta’s lawyers denied the allegations in opening arguments, countering that the company faces plenty of competition from TikTok and other social media platforms. The F.T.C. approved the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago, and it would set a dangerous precedent for the business world to try to unwind the mergers, the lawyers added.

“This case is a grab bag of F.T.C. theories at war with fact and at war with the law,” said Mark Hansen, the company’s litigator and a partner at the law firm Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick. “The facts are going to prove that the F.T.C.’s theories are all wrong.”

The trial — Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms — poses the most consequential threat to the business empire of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder. If the government succeeds, the F.T.C. would most likely ask Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, potentially shifting the way that Silicon Valley does business and altering a long pattern of big tech companies snapping up younger rivals.

Still, legal experts cautioned that it might be challenging for the F.T.C. to win. That’s because the government must prove something unknowable: that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, wouldn’t have achieved the same success without the acquisitions. It is also extremely rare to try to unwind mergers approved years ago, legal experts said.

“One of the most difficult things for antitrust laws to deal with is when industry leaders purchase small potential competitors,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former senior official in the Obama administration’s Department of Justice. Meta, he added, “bought many things that either didn’t pan out or were integrated. How are Instagram and WhatsApp different?”

The efforts continue a yearslong bipartisan pursuit to curtail the vast power that a handful of tech companies have over commerce, the exchange of ideas, entertainment and political discourse. Despite attempts by tech executives to court President Trump, his antitrust appointees have signaled that they will continue the course.

The F.T.C.’s case against Meta is the third major tech antitrust lawsuit to go to trial in the past two years. Last year, the D.O.J. won its antitrust case against Google for monopolizing internet search. A federal judge is set to hear arguments over remedies, including a potential breakup, next week. The D.O.J. also completed a separate trial against Google for monopolizing ad technology, which is still being decided by a federal judge.

The Justice Department has also sued Apple, and the F.T.C. has sued Amazon, accusing the companies of antitrust violations. Those trials are expected to begin next year.

The case against Meta could affect its 3.5 billion users, who on average log onto Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp multiple times a day for news, shopping and texting. Instagram and WhatsApp have attracted more users in recent years as Facebook, Meta’s flagship app, has stopped growing.

F.T.C. Chairman Andrew Ferguson was in the courtroom to listen to the government’s opening statement. Meta’s chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead, and Joel Kaplan, its chief global affairs officer, also attended. Alex Schultz, Meta’s chief marketing officer, sat at the litigator’s table and will serve as the company’s executive at the trial.

Presiding over the case is Judge James Boasberg, 62, the senior judge in the federal court. He is already in the national spotlight for rejecting the Trump administration’s effort to use a powerful wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants it deemed to be members of a violent street gang.

Judge Boasberg has said he had never been a user of Meta’s apps, but was familiar with Facebook Live, which has been featured in criminal trials. He took notes as Mr. Matheson explained the government’s definitions of social networking and methodology to determine Meta was a monopoly. He was equally focused on Meta’s rebuttal of those definitions.

The F.T.C. argued that Mr. Zuckerberg said in 2006 that Facebook was used to connect “actual friends.” The F.T.C. has argued that Meta has had a monopoly in social networking since 2011 and that SnapChat was among the only comparable platforms to Facebook and Instagram.

Meta rejected the F.T.C.’s definition of social networking, saying it faces competition from TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and other platforms. Mr. Hansen said it competed with messaging apps for sharing content between friends and family.

He said more than half of all engagement on Facebook and Instagram is of videos, which put Meta squarely in competition with TikTok, the fast-growing short-video app. When TikTok was momentarily shut down in January, Meta saw a surge of usage to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which shows the company has plenty of competition.

“Meta has no monopoly,” Mr. Hansen said.

During what is projected to be an eight-week trial, the government and Meta are expected to tell competing versions of the company’s 20-year growth story.

The F.T.C.’s argument hinges on Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which forbids a company from maintaining a monopoly through anticompetitive practices.

The F.T.C. accused Facebook, as the company was previously known, of struggling to build a mobile app and fearing that Instagram would rapidly outpace it in popularity. The company overpaid when it purchased Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, the F.T.C. argued.

In 2014, as WhatsApp grew, Meta offered to buy the company for $19 billion — also far above its market value, the government said.

The F.T.C. plans to highlight a paper trial of emails between Meta executives, alongside other evidence, to argue that the company bought the start-ups because they were threats.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Matheson mentioned documents, including what he described as a “smoking gun” February 2012 email by Mr. Zuckerberg, in which the chief executive discussed the rise of Instagram and the importance of “neutralizing a potential competitor.” In another email in November 2012 to the former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, “Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion.”

The F.T.C. lawyer said Meta bought WhatsApp to keep it from being acquired by competitors like Google, which were trying to use a messaging service to launch a competing social network. Meta’s acquisition of WhatsApp was intended to build a “moat” around the company’s monopoly in social networking, Mr. Matheson said.

The government is set to call witnesses from Meta, as well as competitors, venture capitalists, economists and media industry executives. Mr. Zuckerberg was expected to be called as the first witness as soon as Monday. The F.T.C. said Ms. Sandberg, and Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, would testify this week.

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