Today, the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook for a slew of antitrust violations, targeting the way the company eliminated its top competitors via the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. More than 40 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit mirroring the FTC’s, displaying broad, bipartisan coordination rare in an age of polarized, dysfunctional government. 

By acting together, the state attorneys general will make Facebook’s life difficult, bringing a more robust lawsuit than the Department of Justice’s case against Google. There, only 11 state AGs joined, all of them Republican, giving Google an opportunity to play them off their counterparts. Facebook will have no such luck. 

Facebook’s case will now be much tougher to fight than Google’s, since Google can play those AGs who are part of the DOJ lawsuit against those who are not. If some AGs who waited end up bringing their own lawsuit, Google’s lawyers could weaken both cases by pointing out the inconsistencies. 

In Facebook’s case, however, a strong, bipartisan group of state attorneys general won’t suffer from disjointed arguments. This will make Facebook’s life quite painful.

“If it was just the federal government, it might be more of a mismatch,” Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy, told me. “Those are attorney general offices with budgets to hire their own experts, and you can multiply the resources.” 

More at Big Technology.