Silicon Valley Is About to Spend a Lot of Time in Court

A year ago the big U.S. tech companies were facing threats from regulators in Europe and to some extent in China, but they were still golden at home. President Obama’s chief digital officer was a Google veteran, and the month before Election Day, the White House staged a tech-infused South by South Lawn festival that Obama called the “first annual.” Lobbyists for Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.com got respectful congressional audiences for their priorities: more visas for high-tech workers, a crackdown on patent trolls, and extended tax credits for R&D.

Heading into 2018, the same companies find themselves almost as pressured in the U.S. as they are in other parts of the world. Their stock prices are still sky-high; their reputations less so. Various tech companies stand accused of capturing or suffocating potential competitors, shirking taxes, invading privacy, and providing a venue for sex traffickers. (They deny the accusations.)