Four months after the GAFA went before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, which has been investigating possible abuses of GAFA's dominant position for more than a year, Facebook is once again in the hot seat. The federal government, through the U.S. Competition Commission (FTC) as well as attorneys general representing 48 states and territories of the country, decided Wednesday, December 9 to file a complaint in the Supreme Court against Facebook for abuse of dominant position.

This coalition particularly accuses Facebook, like the other members of gafa, of using the personal data of its users and of abusively using acquisitions of competitors to prevent, illegally, any competitor from emerging, to the detriment of consumers, citizens, innovation and democracy.

The US Competition Commission (FTC) accuses Facebook of having used its dominant position, thanks to its financial omnipotence to buy successively in 2012, Instagram (for $ 1 billion) and in 2014,  Whatsapp (for $ 22 billion) that the group saw as future rivals and potential competitors who could have threatened its dominant position in the market. Accusing it of grabbing a large share of global digital advertising revenues thanks to the personal data of its billions of users. 

The FTC and the attorneys general of the 48 states demand nothing more and nothing less than that a separation of the group's assets be recorded by the courts, a dismantling in short of Facebook by forcing the group to separate from its Instagram and whatsapp applications and supervise the processes of acquisition of the companies or third-party startup.

Faced with this antitrust coalition, Mark Zuckerberg already embarrassed by exchanges of letters that indicate that his group saw with bad eye the development of the Instagram application that he perceived as a possible threat to be dismissed does not count despite everything, not to let it happen.

Defending himself from having sought to muzzle Instagram and whatsapp, but rather to have contributed to making them emerge thanks to the acquisition and the investments made for their development, the boss of Facebook was keen to recall that the FTC had approved the acquisitions of the two applications and that forcing it to divest itself of its assets would not be not without consequences because it would threaten thousands of jobs and would set a dangerous precedent in terms of asset acquisition " suggesting that no acquisition is ever definitive".

The legal battle in perspective promises to be tough for one of the members of the "big four". Zuckerberg will have to find better than the awakening of American patriotism of elected officials and demonstrate in court that the dismantling of his group has more disadvantages than advantages for the American economy. It will probably also have to provide more guarantees in the handling of users' private data.

Is this the beginning of the end clap for the hyper domination of the GAFA which, today alone weigh $ 4,780 billion on the stock market and exercise an undivided domination on the global internet? Nothing is less certain because another behemoth of American big tech, Microsoft managed in the late 1990s to get out of business after three years of legal proceedings for unfair competition without the US Department of Justice reaching a dismantling Lement. Facebook is playing for its survival in the coming months.