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On the morning of May 15, 1911, after hearing 440 witnesses and reviewing 12,000 pages of evidence, the verdict was reached in case 221 US 1.
It read: Standard Oil, the corporate empire of John D. Rockefeller, will be smashed.
The judges decided that the conglomerate should be replaced by 34 individual companies that compete with each other.
Rockefeller, once celebrated for bringing light and warmth to every home in the country, had become too powerful for Americans.
With Case 221 US 1 a campaign against monopolists began in the United States.
Rockefeller, the cigarette maker James Duke, the steel entrepreneur Andrew Carnegie, the banker JP Morgan - they were all sole rulers in their industries at the time.
And they were all considered unscrupulous exploiters.
The men were called “robber barons”.
Shortly after the Standard Oil trial, the government split up American Tobacco and sued US Steel.
Americans revered courageous founders, but the thought of someone subjugating all competition was scary to many.
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The country is fighting a new monopoly today: Big Tech.
Finally, one must say, because the so-called big four - Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon - were long glorified as saviors and seemed inviolable.
There are now several lawsuits pending from the US government, states and individual citizens.
Again it is about the abuse of power.
Again, the evidence is thousands of pages long.
And it is to be hoped that the verdict will be the same as it was in Rockefeller's time.
Big Tech has a market value of nearly six trillion dollars.
That is significantly more than the value of all goods and services that are manufactured in Germany year after year.
A tremendous economic power is concentrated on America's west coast.
Google, for example, controls 90 percent of the internet search market - as much as Rockefeller once did for oil.
But the size itself is not the problem.
You can't punish managers for their success.
The problem is that firms use their size to crush rivals.
And that's why they should be smashed.
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It is not about abolishing the market economy.
But on the contrary.
Big tech should be split up to defend a central element of the market economy: competition.
That healthy competition that creates progress and prosperity.
If entrepreneurs have to compete with one another, there is more innovation.
If customers are left with a choice between different providers, the prices are low.
If dominance is limited, young companies have a chance.
Only then can every citizen - according to the American ideal - be a founder.
How Google is ousting rivals
According to the latest lawsuits, Google is transferring a lot of money to Apple to set its search engine on iPhones as the default.
There is talk of eight to twelve billion dollars a year.
For other providers like Bing and DuckDuckGo that would be a big disadvantage.
Which user is bothered to change the search engine in the system settings?
Google, it seems, has teamed up with Apple to drive rivals out of business.
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Around 1870 Rockefeller met the railroad king Cornelius Vanderbilt in New York.
The two made a deal.
Vanderbilt wanted to fill his freight trains and agreed to ship Rockefeller's oil for $ 1.65 a barrel - a 30 percent discount.
The other sponsors suddenly had a problem.
They continued to pay more than two dollars a barrel, so their oil was more expensive.
Rockefeller had gained a distinct advantage.
Attack on the heart of the market economy
The alliances - formerly Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, now Google and Apple - differ in many ways.
But they have one thing in common: They were closed with the intention of stifling competition.
Both therefore represent an attack on the heart of the market economy.
Rockefeller also had another strategy to get rid of rivals: he bought them out.
One after the other.
First in his native Ohio, then across the country.
At the height of his power, Rockefeller eventually ruled over 20,000 oil rigs, 6,500 kilometers of pipeline and 5,000 tanker trucks.
He had taken over practically all of the promising oil companies and no longer had to fear competition.
Today the US Trade Commission and 46 states are making similar charges against Facebook.
The company, they say, has distorted competition by buying Instagram.
The lawsuit is based primarily on emails from Mark Zuckerberg from April 2012. “Instagram,” he wrote to his managers at the time, “can cause us great damage.” He had to decide whether to buy the photo platform.
A few days later he did.
So Zuckerberg made a rival he considered dangerous part of his empire - a real Rockefeller move.
Fight against monopolies
"Monopolies," said US Senator John Sherman in a celebrated speech 130 years ago, "do not fit our form of government." Just as America should not be ruled by kings, he continued, so neither should kings be allowed to run the economy to steer.
No overpowering companies, that means that can deal with customers and business partners as they want.
The "Sherman Act" of 1890, which forbids monopolies to abuse their power, became the mother of American competition law.
It's time to let go of old Sherman on Big Tech.
The momentum seems there.
US President Joe Biden has made a promise to tame companies.
And many members of Congress support him.
Democrats and Republicans are at odds, but they can agree on one thing: that Silicon Valley must be shown the limits.
The companies of the valley have become as sinister to Americans as the empires of Rockefeller, Duke, Carnegie and Morgan once were.
Some now call the tech bosses “cyber barons”.
It's a nickname that seems to fit.