The multi-pronged attempt by stateAttorneysGeneral, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission to find Google and Facebook liable for violating antitrust law may result in breaking up these giant companies. But in order for any of this to cause lasting change, we need to look to the not-so-recent past. In the world of antitrust, the calls to “break up” Big Tech companies translate to the fairly standard remedy of “structural separation,” where companies are barred from selling services and competing with the buyers of those services (for example, rail companies have been forced to stop selling freight services that compete with their own customers). It has been done before as part of the fight against communication monopolies. However, history shows us that the real work is not just breaking up companies, but following through