FTC’s Khan Should Pick Her Targets More Carefully

Lina Khan needs to work on her aim. A judge’s ruling today against the Federal Trade Commission’s request to block Microsoft’s purchase of Activision was so definitive that it has to hurt the regulator’s credibility, at least when it comes to tech cases. Coming immediately after a similar defeat involving Meta Platforms, the ruling suggests that by going after all tech, all the time, Khan is overreaching and risks achieving nothing. The taxpayers whose money she is spending have a right to a more refined approach.

Core to the FTC’s Microsoft case was the idea that buying Activision would give Microsoft “increased incentive” to withhold Activision content—the most important of which is the hit game Call of Duty—from rival platforms such as Sony’s PlayStation. But in her ruling, the judge listed eight ways the FTC had failed to show Microsoft had an incentive to withhold Call of Duty. Perhaps the most damning was this one: “Despite the…production of nearly 1 million documents and 30 depositions, the FTC has not identified a single document which contradicts Microsoft’s publicly-stated commitment to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation.” Ouch.