https://www.economist.com/node/21801924?fsrc=rss%7Cbus
ANOTHER DAY, another antitrust case against big tech. In May alone the attorney-general of the District of Columbia filed a complaint against Amazon, Germany’s competition authority went after Amazon and Google to determine whether they have “paramount significance for competition across markets”, and its Italian counterpart hit Google with a €100m ($122m) fine for restricting access to Android Auto, a version of the firm’s mobile operating system for cars.
And the pace may be picking up. On June 4th both Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, launched parallel probes to see if Facebook is using the data it collects to give itself an undue advantage in online advertising. The same day German trustbusters opened another case into whether Google favours its newish “News Showcase”, a curated collection of newspaper articles, in its search results. And on June 7th the French competition watchdog announced it had reached a settlement with Google over claims that the firm abuses its dominant position in the market for dishing up online advertisements. Google will pay a fine of €220m and amend some business practices.
In part the regulators are reacting to political winds. “They can do no wrong going after big tech,” quips Justus Haucap of the University of…
