GAFAM NewsMonthly roundup
Big Tech in April 2025: the light and the dark
April 2025: generative AI moved into real products at Microsoft, Google and Meta, Apple shifted iPhone output to India, and antitrust pressure mounted.
- First published in Japanese
- English edition
The Owl here, with a short roundup of the GAFAM news from April 2025.
April saw two things happening at once: generative AI moving faster into real products, and antitrust headwinds growing stronger. It was a month in which the brighter the light got, the deeper the shadows grew. While AI blended into offices, the cloud and mobile devices, regulators got serious about correcting platform dominance. How to balance the benefits of technology with healthy markets is increasingly the central question.
The light side
Generative AI’s “year of real-world use” gets fully underway
After a model performance race that ran through March, April turned into a contest over APIs and user experience: who can make AI easiest to use. Implementation costs for developers fell, and generative AI began to blend into Office, smartphones and cloud infrastructure. Here are the main announcements.
On April 4, at Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event, the company announced a full overhaul of Copilot. It added search across Slack and Google Drive and an “Actions” feature that carries out tasks such as bookings and payments automatically, turning the AI into a “secretary that acts.” [1]
On April 17, Google released Gemini 2.5 Flash, a “thinking model.” It strengthens internal reasoning steps and lifts performance in long-form coding and multimodal reasoning. Google says it also offers excellent cost performance. [2]
On April 29, at LlamaCon, Meta’s first-ever developer conference, the company announced the “Llama API.” It promises one-line integration, and Meta also previewed a standalone AI assistant app. Meta is pursuing a free or low-cost strategy to grow its ecosystem. [3]
A symbol of supply chain diversification: “Made in India” becomes reality
Apple, hurrying to hedge against the risks in US–China relations, has started producing older models at Tata’s new plant in Tamil Nadu, India, and the iPhone 16 and 16e at Foxconn’s new plant in Bengaluru. Its plan to move most US-bound iPhone production to India by 2026 was confirmed in official documents. An investment on the scale of 50,000 jobs is a symbolic step that redraws the map of manufacturing. [4]
The dark side
Antitrust pressure closes in from every direction
April brought major developments in antitrust actions against GAFAM.
First, in the EU, the first penalties under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) were imposed. On April 23, Apple was fined €500 million for obstructing external payments on the App Store, and Meta was fined €200 million over its “Pay or Consent” advertising model. The companies were given two months to comply. [5]
In the United States, in the Department of Justice’s case over Google’s monopolies in two markets, ad servers and ad exchanges, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found on April 17 that Google had acted illegally. Talks on remedies, including a possible breakup, are set to begin on or after May 2. [6]
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating the dominant positions of AWS and Microsoft in the cloud market. After issuing provisional findings in January, it resumed additional hearings with the companies in April and plans to publish its final report around midyear. [7]
The deeper our dependence on platforms, the more real these simultaneous, multi-front regulatory actions become. The proposals to break up Google’s ad business and the EU’s DMA penalties in particular are likely to strike at the core of these business models, and they have quickly emerged as a major risk factor for investors too.
Stock prices stay weak, but…
After falling 5.7% in March, the S&P 500 kept falling in April, though only slightly, ending the month down 0.8%. [8] That said, the month played out as a “V-shaped recovery”: the index fell nearly 7% in the “Trump tariff shock” early in the month, then climbed back toward month-end.
GAFAM stocks had been recovering even more slowly than that, but Google, Meta and Microsoft are rebounding after strong earnings. [9] [10]
On the other hand, analysts keep pointing out that Apple and Amazon, which are more exposed to tariffs, have been slower to bounce back.
Either way, GAFAM’s price-to-earnings ratios remain high. Cautious voices are also prominent, warning that rising interest rates or tighter regulation could chill market sentiment again.
Both AI and regulation are running at full throttle. May brings Google I/O and WWDC. Let’s watch together for the next dazzling light, and the shadows lurking behind it.
References
[4] Apple to make most US-bound iPhones in India, sources say (Bloomberg) (in Japanese)
[5] Apple, Meta fined as EU presses ahead with tech probes (Reuters)
[6] Google holds illegal monopolies in ad tech, US judge finds (Reuters)