Google Dodges an Antitrust Bullet

Plus: Figma’s reality check; ChatGPT’s projects

Joey Padgett
September 04, 2025

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Hey people!

Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

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Photo by Remy Gieling

What's up: Judge Mehta imposed light penalties on Google despite finding illegal search monopolization, rejecting DOJ calls for breakup.
- Google must share some search data with rivals and can't pay for exclusive default search deals, but can still pay to be the default.
- The judge credited AI competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity with "changing the course of this case."
So what: So much for the possible penalty of selling Chrome! Google dodged a bullet here. And while I think it’s logical to take AI competition into consideration, this is yet another example of antitrust being too slow to be effective. If Google faces little to no penalties for anti-competitive actions a decade ago because of AI developments in the last few years, how will anti-trust efforts ever deter companies from abusing their monopoly power?

What's up: Figma shares plunged 14% in extended trading after the company's first earnings report since its July IPO.
- Revenue beat estimates at $249.6 million vs. $248.8 million expected, growing 41% year-over-year.
- The company swung to net income of $846,000 from a $827.9 million loss in Q2 2024.
So what: It’s great for Figma’s business that they’ve gone public, swung a loss into a gain, and driven so much awareness via the stock market… But it’s gotta be frustrating to see short-term trading pump and then crash their stock. This is not financial advice, but I predict we see Figma rebound and build off a solid base once the dust settles.

What's up: OpenAI made its Projects feature available to free ChatGPT users after being a paid-only perk.
- Projects act as folders for organizing AI chats with custom instructions and file references.
- Free users can upload 5 files per project, while Plus subscribers get 25 and Pro subscribers get 40.
So what: Projects are a killer feature for AI chat apps. As a user, it’s incredible to have specific context and instructions so I get better answers. It gives me the confidence to spin-up more projects (ex. health questions, career advice, etc.) and discover more things the app can do well. And because we can all go deeper on our most important use cases, we spend more time on the apps, driving marketshare and momentum for OpenAI and the others.

ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.

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