You jest, but the FTC is trying to appeal (undo) the merger in court, and this makes their case a lot stronger: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/us-ftc-tries-again-stop-microsofts-already-closed-deal-activision-2023-12-06/

For a 68,000,000,000$ deal, even if this helps the FTC by 1%, that's a huge risk

WOAH WOAH WOAH LET'S KEEP THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE HERE

They didn't even slam them.

There's a book called The Media Monopoly that details how media companies have consolidated to just a handful of mega corps and the book had to be republished 5 times since the 80s because every few years the number keeps shrinking dramatically. The author later released a brand new book called The New Media Monopoly which is essentially the 7th edition of the original book and at this point we're in a fucked up late stage version of the problem he originally detailed.

From the Wiki on the author:

In 2000 Bagdikian stated, "Every edition has been considered by some to be alarmist and every edition ends up being too conservative." In this latest version, Bagdikian wrote that the number of corporations controlling most of the media decreased to five: Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann. He argued, "This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history."

The Onion is a bit too accurate sometimes.

Bill Clinton, chief executive of U.S. Government, a division of MCI-WorldCom, praised Monday's merger as "an excellent move."'

LMAO

Bill Clinton, chief executive of U.S. Government, a division of MCI-WorldCom, praised Monday's merger as "an excellent move."

I'll be... they even predicted the "sovereign citizen" movement!

Taco Bell won the franchise wars

No you see it’s OK to lie to the court when you’re rich or a multinational company

I will literally never understand why the word of a corporation has any weight if it isn't bound by law.

You need to force corporations to act if it's against their own interests.

The only way to fight back is with your wallet. Unfortunately we are SUBSTANTIALLY outnumbered. It is what it is.

The FTC argued this would happen, it's the court that swallowed Microsoft's tripe. This is the FTC's "I told you, bro!"

The FTC knew it was coming, and tried to stop the merger. But they got shot down in the courts, because a judge believed Microsoft was going to be benevolent and not immediately lay off all of the acquired company’s employees.

This is the FTC’s way of publicly slapping the judge.

The FTC tried to stop the merger, it’s not their fault. Blame the courts.

The price tag, followed by a massive round of layoffs is eyebrow-raising.

Well I for one am shocked to see a megacap do significant layoffs after M&A, talk about breaking with tradition!

As far as I understand the circumstances, because Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard are both US companies, they ultimately fall under US regulation except for any of their offices/holdings in other countries, where they have to abide by the local laws. The reason the FTC is upset now is that Microsoft had said that Activision-Blizzard was largely going to be its own independent company under the Microsoft brand, so these layoffs go against those promises - especially with the wording about removing "overlap" between the companies, which points to them firing people at Activision-Blizzard who had the same job as people already working at Microsoft. The only reason that they'd do that is if they're not actually letting Activision-Blizzard run on their own and are going to be merging the company into Microsoft more than they had said they would.

I do remember something about the UK signing off on the merger, so I assume that there are some countries that did their own "due diligence" and approved the acquisition, but a majority of these layoffs are in California by the sounds of it, so all any of them could really do at this point is hold Microsoft liable if they don't follow local labor laws about severances and the like. I assume that they felt the same way as the FTC, in that the promise of Activision-Blizzard running on their own meant that there was little concern about monopolizing the industry.