Author: Ronan Shields

The presence of leading executives, including Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, at President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration led many to believe that Big Tech would have a smooth course in the coming years, especially in any antitrust trial. 

So, when it emerged that Google met Justice Department execs, encouraging them to roll back earlier proposed remedies, including the divestiture of web browser Chrome, in its search antitrust trial, many assumed its political influence would win out. 

However, developments later in the week suggest those efforts — Bloomberg claimed last week that Google’s arguments centered on maintaining the tech hegemony of U.S. companies — proved fruitless in the case, where Judge Amit Mehta ruled Google’s search market tactics were illegal last year.  

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When Amazon killed its TikTok-style feed, Inspire, last month, most advertisers were unsurprised. In their eyes, it just didn’t seem to have gained any real interest.

“It never really felt like it had enough traction, in terms of scale, to invest more than an initial test for many brands,” said Joe O’Connor, senior director of innovation and growth at Tinuiti. O’Connor noted that his team didn’t see much adoption from their clients, so they weren’t shocked that Amazon sunsetted it.

And while Amazon was nowhere near reliant on the video feed to generate any significant revenue, it’s still a little surprising that even the biggest e-commerce player couldn’t make social commerce work.

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