Latest Google Fine Highlights EU’s Interventionist Attack on US Tech Companies

WASHINGTON—Following the European Commission’s €2.95 billion fine against Google for allegedly abusing dominant positions in advertising technology products, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy, released the following statement from Joseph V. Coniglio, director of antitrust and innovation policy:

The European Commission’s reasoning that Google is leveraging a dominant position for competitive advantage in another market goes beyond what U.S. antitrust law allows. This shines a light on how Europe is yet again taking a more interventionist approach to penalize American tech companies.

It’s telling that Commission’s case doesn’t focus on the main practice that a U.S. court has found to be anticompetitive—restricting real-time access to Google’s ad exchange unless publishers also use Google’s ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). Moreover, contrary the Commission’s position, U.S. courts have found that Google does not enjoy substantial buy-side market power.

While the Commission clearly wants to force Google to divest core parts of its ad tech suite, U.S. courts have now unequivocally rejected similarly outrageous breakup demands in the Google search case. Those high standards should likewise preclude structural relief in ad tech on both sides of the Atlantic.

Rather than constitute sound legal relief, a divestiture demand would suggest a more troubling agenda: dismantling one of America's most successful technology companies—and one essential to maintaining Western technological leadership against China.