Here¡¯s a bit of antitrust trivia for you. How long does it take for Europe¡¯s antitrust enforcers to punish a company once they¡¯ve pointed out its misbehavior? The answer: about a year.
When the European Commission officially complained about Apple¡¯s streaming rules in February 2023, it followed that up with a €1.8 billion ($2 billion) fine in March 2024.
Why such slow responses? Perhaps because the commission¡¯s complaint had an eye-catching threat: ¡°structural remedies,¡± a.k.a. a possible breakup of Google. It would be politically foolhardy for Europe to act alone in pushing to split up one of the biggest companies to come out of the U.S. Consider the number of times Donald Trump has accused European regulators of hating on America. Even Barack Obama has thrown shade at the continent¡¯s trust busters for being anti-American. This would just amp up the rhetoric.
The commission is probably waiting for its counterparts in Washington to make a move. Earlier last month, the Department of Justice told a judge it was also considering structural remedies for Google. Judge Amit Mehta ¡ª who has already ruled that Google is a monopolist ¡ª will decide on those suggestions in August 2025. Google has said the DOJ¡¯s proposals ¡°go far beyond¡± the legal issues in its case and represent ¡°government overreach.¡±
Some Wall Street analysts don¡¯t expect a breakup to happen, pointing out that Google will keep the DOJ¡¯s efforts tied up in court for years. But that will be harder to pull off if European regulators get behind their American counterparts. An order from both the U.S. and European Union would create overwhelming pressure on Google, including a prolonged legal battle on two fronts and a hit to public opinion and investor confidence.
Historically, officials on opposite sides of the Atlantic have clashed. In 2001, after the DOJ approved a merger between General Electric and Honeywell International, the European Commission blocked it. So began an era of tension over the reach of EU competition law and antitrust philosophy itself.
U.S. regulators for decades had been aligned with so-called Chicago School antitrust principles that narrowly define consumer harm in terms of price increases. Monopolies were bad because they price gouged, essentially. But as large technology companies have come to dominate a number of markets, Europe has expanded the definition of harm to include things like the erosion of privacy and consumer autonomy.
Today, regulators on both sides are starting to agree on that. In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy and said that America had chosen the ¡°wrong path¡± 40 years prior, ¡°following the misguided philosophy of people like Robert Bork.¡± Bork was...
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