3 Jaw-Dropping Facts About the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Have you ever played the board game Monopoly? If so, you may be familiar with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was an 1890 law that prohibited monopolies. The law is still in effect in the United States and is consistently used to ensure that businesses have fair competition and not a monopoly over a share of a market (Source).

Although there are other provisions to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, this article will report on why tech giants Google and Apple are accused of breaking this law. This post will also speculate on whether OpenAI will one day find itself in a similar situation and be accused of having a monopoly over the AI market with ChatGPT.

Let’s dive deep.

Background on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

In 1998, Microsoft was found to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The courts found that there wasn’t enough competition. The result: Microsoft was forced to sell its component divisions to its competitors. One of those competitors was Steve Jobs of Apple Computers. Apple benefited from the ruling (Source).

Google’s Alleged Violation

The Justice Department is accusing Google of abusing its power as a search engine to control too big a…