In the world of “move fast and break things,” the Federal Trade Commission moved slowly and accomplished nothing of note.

Last week, Meta declared courtroom victory over the FTC after a US judge ruled the company didn’t illegally stifle competition through its multi-billion-dollar acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp way back when. Why? According to the judge, the FTC had too narrow a definition of the market in which Meta competes and the rise of platforms such as TikTok (albeit quite a few years later) proves the company still has rivals. The win signals the end of a (brief) era of more stringent antitrust scrutiny against Big Tech titans.

Watch It, Buster

The FTC’s case against Meta was pretty straightforward: Facebook operates primarily in “personal social networking,” a market whose other participants are only Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and little-known also-ran MeWe. That, the agency said, makes its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions objectionable. While the FTC’s argument may have held more water back in late 2020, when it filed the lawsuit amid the final days of Trump 1.0, US District Judge James Boasberg essentially argued the point is moot in a 2025 landscape in which Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube “evolved to have nearly identical” features.

The ruling is somewhat parallel to Google’s own antitrust case this year, in which the court found the company guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly in the search engine sector but provided light-touch remedies on the grounds that AI chatbots are now radically shifting internet user behavior.

Already, some in Silicon Valley see it as a green light for Big Tech to resume snapping up startups. “[The ruling] will eliminate a lot of the gymnastics that the major acquirers are going through, and it should really open the door,” Tomasz Tunguz, a general partner at the venture capital firm Theory Ventures, told The New York Times. It’s a sign that trustbusters may need to reassess their strategy:

• “The FTC, or the DOJ or the states should have challenged these acquisitions [when they occurred],” Spencer Waller, professor and director of the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola University Chicago, told The Daily Upside. “You either have to have robust challenges on potential or nascent competition theories when these mergers are happening, or you have to have robust enforcement on the back end.”
• “My main takeaway is, if the courts are going to be overly accepting of defendants’ arguments in monopolization cases, the agencies should be less accepting in merger cases,” Waller added, noting that he is concerned for the worldview that “everything competes with everything.”

Anything EU Can Do: Big Tech is getting more slack across the Atlantic, too. Last week, the European Union’s competition commission proposed reforms to its landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a bid to relax rules on data sharing and AI governance.

The Swiss have never been big, or at least loud, on homeland solidarity, but this seemed to come close.

For months, word has circulated that Swiss multinational investment bank UBS might leave its Alpine homeland for the US in order to escape punitive regulatory changes.

Last week, CEO Sergio Ermotti did his best to put the idea to rest, calling the speculation an unprintable eight-letter word for an animal dropping that rhymes with wool knit. But the Swiss finance minister reasserted the government’s support for reforms that Ermotti said are unworkable, making it harder to dismiss reports that the bank has had contingency talks with top US officials.

Stuck Between a Stein and a Hart Place

These days, relations between the Swiss government and UBS are as cold as the La Brévine valley in December, a situation that has its roots in 2023, when officials brokered an emergency sale of collapsed Credit Suisse to its onetime rival. The government provided liquidity and loss guarantees and wrote off billions in bonds as part of the sale, sparking fears that Switzerland would struggle to bail out the new, outsized entity if another financial crisis materialized.

To address those concerns, officials proposed forcing UBS to add an extra $26 billion in capital, a measure that Europe’s largest activist investor and UBS shareholder Cevian Capital said would make running a global investment bank in Switzerland “not viable.” UBS agrees and, reports suggest, has been working on escape plans. Last week, the Financial Times reported UBS chair Colm Kelleher and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held private talks about a stateside relocation. Publicly, UBS has put on a different face: Ermotti told a banking conference three days after the FT report that UBS “never, ever threatened to leave the country,” though he reiterated that the new capital requirement “won’t work for us.” The result is a good old-fashioned political impasse:

• On Friday, Swiss newspaper Le Temps reported that finance minister Karin Keller-Sutter backed the government’s “perfectly reasonable” capital demand. “Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill again in the event of a crisis,” she said.
• Swiss parliamentarians could break the deadlock: Members of the economic affairs committee of the National Council’s lower house, which is involved in banking regulations, argued in a letter that new capital requirements shouldn’t be more onerous than those in other international financial centers.

Kayfabe on the Aare: David Benamou of Axiom Alternative Investments, which holds UBS bonds, told Swiss publication Finews that UBS’s talks with US officials were “more of a tactical reaction to political pressure in Switzerland.” While it’s clear Ermotti intends to expand in the US, he said, a full relocation would be “counterproductive because UBS’s foundation remains in Switzerland, not least because of the brand and the trust it enjoys worldwide.”

Flight controllers are getting paid again, but air travel hasn’t yet regained its lost altitude with the flying public. The result: “Buses are cool,” according to Flix North America CEO Kai Boysan, who said that bookings for FlixBus and sister brand Greyhound are up 17% this Thanksgiving. That jibes with the American Bus Association’s finding that the number of passengers taking buses this holiday weekend is up double-digits compared with last year, rising as high as 30% on some routes.

Some Americans may have opted for alternate modes of travel as they planned trips during the government shutdown, before the FAA rolled back flight reductions. But demand for grounded travel, from buses to trains, was already rising before airlines hit the government-caused turbulence.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Etc.

More than 80 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more this Thanksgiving, AAA estimated, setting a new record and up 2% from last year. Nine in ten of those will be traveling by car, while about 6 million will fly and 25 million will take an alternative mode of travel, like a bus, train or boat. Air travel’s expected to rise 2% compared to last year, while alt-travel’s predicted to surge more than 8%, with AAA adding that buses and trains could see an additional boost from last-minute bookings as travelers skip the skies post-shutdown.

It’s not just buses getting a boost:

• Amtrak just reported a record year, with trips from October of last year through this September jumping more than 5% to an all-time high. The train company also recorded record revenues, and after pumping $5.5 billion into upgrading stations and such, it plans to secure a profit by 2028.
• More Americans are also combining their journey and destination by taking cruises, with AAA expecting more than 20 million Americans to do so this year. During Thanksgiving, the Caribbean is especially popular.

On a Budget: Even before the government shutdown grounded flights, travelers had grown wary of delays and cancellations that leave them stuck sleeping at the airport. Boysan said Flix Buses and Greyhounds depart on time 97% of the time. He also pointed to upgrades in buses, including wifi and power outlets. Amtrak has also invested in upgrading its aging fleet. However, the biggest selling point for picking buses and trains could be price: AAA found the average domestic roundtrip flight costs $700. And while budget-conscious customers opt for affordability when they can, airlines are increasingly catering to wealthier fliers who can splurge on roomier seats.