The nation’s antitrust enforcers and Congress are stepping up their scrutiny of the tech giants. Disruptive investigations, federal lawsuits and new rules could loom for Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

The companies and their executives don’t need to look far for guidance about how this could all play out. One of their top competitors, Microsoft, faced the government’s ire in the 1990s, leading to a bruising battle in federal court. The company was found to have repeatedly violated the nation’s antitrust laws, and it agreed to change its corporate behavior as part of an eventual settlement.

“The Microsoft case is incredibly front and center, the road map, in all these discussions about big tech and antitrust,” said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University and co-author of “The Microsoft Antitrust Cases: Competition Policy for the Twenty-First Century.”

Interviews with several of the people at the center of the government’s case against the company, as well as antitrust experts, suggest that tech executives will need to be careful and flexible in navigating their turn in the cross hairs.