According to Techmeme, Adobe is nearing a $1.9 billion deal to acquire NYSE-listed Semrush, paying $12 per share for the SEO platform company as artificial intelligence use increases across digital marketing. Meanwhile, a federal court delivered a decisive rejection of the FTC’s antitrust case against Meta, originally filed under Chair Lina Khan’s leadership. The judge dismissed the case for failing to plausibly allege monopoly power, specifically rejecting the FTC’s “gerrymandered” definition of a “personal social networking” market that improperly excluded TikTok and YouTube. The court found that TikTok has actually caused Meta’s share of user time spent to decline, undermining the FTC’s core arguments about market dominance. This represents a brutal legal loss for one of Khan’s most prominent anti-big tech cases.
FTC’s metaverse reality check
Here’s the thing about this FTC loss – it’s not just a procedural setback. The court basically said the agency’s entire market definition was nonsense. They tried to create this artificially narrow “personal social networking” category that conveniently excluded TikTok and YouTube, two platforms that absolutely compete for user attention. And the data showed TikTok is actually winning that battle, with Meta’s share of user time declining. So the FTC’s core argument about monopoly power? Completely undermined by reality.
What’s fascinating is how this reflects a broader pattern in Khan’s tenure. As Eric Seufert noted, she didn’t file this case initially – it was dismissed outright before her FTC re-filed it and pursued it vigorously. There’s a certain ideological determination here that seems to be running headfirst into legal and market realities. When you’re trying to prove monopoly power but the data shows your target is actually losing ground to competitors… well, that’s a tough position to be in.
Adobe’s AI-powered SEO play
Meanwhile, Adobe’s potential $1.9 billion Semrush acquisition tells a completely different story about where the market is actually heading. They’re betting big that AI-driven SEO tools will become increasingly valuable as search behavior evolves. Semrush helps companies optimize their content for search engines, and with AI changing how people search and what they find, this could be a smart defensive move.
Think about it – as generative AI starts answering queries directly through tools like ChatGPT, traditional SEO becomes both more complicated and more important. Companies will need sophisticated tools to understand how their content performs across both conventional search and AI-powered interfaces. Adobe’s basically saying they want to own that entire workflow from content creation to optimization to measurement.
Regulatory theory vs market reality
These two stories happening simultaneously create a fascinating contrast. On one hand, you have regulators trying to break up what they see as entrenched monopolies. On the other, you have those same “monopolies” actually facing intense competition and making billion-dollar bets to stay relevant. The court’s ruling specifically noted that TikTok has caused Meta’s market position to erode – that’s not monopoly behavior, that’s how competitive markets are supposed to work.
As Josh Wright and other antitrust experts have pointed out, this case highlights the danger of regulators getting too far ahead of market realities. When your theory of harm doesn’t match what’s actually happening with consumers and competitors, you’re going to have a bad time in court. And this was indeed a very bad time for the FTC.
What comes next
So where does this leave us? For the FTC, it’s back to the drawing board with their antitrust approach. They’ll need to either develop more sophisticated arguments that actually reflect market dynamics or focus on different types of cases entirely. For Adobe and Semrush, it’s about integrating SEO capabilities into their existing marketing cloud while navigating the AI transformation that’s reshaping their entire industry.
The bigger picture here is that markets move faster than regulation – always have, always will. While regulators were arguing about whether Facebook had monopoly power in “personal social networking,” the competitive landscape was shifting beneath their feet. Now we get to watch whether the regulatory approach adapts to this new reality or keeps fighting yesterday’s battles.
