European Union antitrust chief warns against breaking up Big Tech firms
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager says breaking up tech giants like Apple and Google, could have unintended consequences and legal ramifications.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission
As the European Union continues to plan greater taxation and restrictions on big technology firms, its chief antitrust enforcer says plans to break them up would be "doable," but risky.
"I don't think it is something that should be introduced in this legislation," EU digital policy and antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager told The Information. "And I think one should be very careful with that type of remedy because one should be very sure how it would actually work."
"It would tie you up in court for a very, very long time," she continued. "I think it's important we try these routes first with the platforms."
However, Vestager comments come as other EU officials have indicated that they would welcome breaking up these companies. They include Thierry Breton, the EU's Internal Market Commissioner, who has previously pressured Tim Cook over the privacy aspects of Apple's coronavirus contact tracing.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission
As the European Union continues to plan greater taxation and restrictions on big technology firms, its chief antitrust enforcer says plans to break them up would be "doable," but risky.
"I don't think it is something that should be introduced in this legislation," EU digital policy and antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager told The Information. "And I think one should be very careful with that type of remedy because one should be very sure how it would actually work."
"It would tie you up in court for a very, very long time," she continued. "I think it's important we try these routes first with the platforms."
However, Vestager comments come as other EU officials have indicated that they would welcome breaking up these companies. They include Thierry Breton, the EU's Internal Market Commissioner, who has previously pressured Tim Cook over the privacy aspects of Apple's coronavirus contact tracing.
Comments
Investigations will run their course and if companies are found to be in breach of any legislation, they will be dealt with (independently of where they are based).
There are perfectly good mechanisms already in place but, as with every other area of legislation, changes to legal frameworks will be made to bring them into line with the times.
And the leaders of the free world hasn’t learned that lesson or choose to ignore it or they’re already supporting CCP China unknowingly or knowingly.
They already got a knock down a few years ago while trying to push the idea (Telefonica was the biggest offender) that the big digital platforms should also being paying them (on top of what end consumers and regular business already pays them) for the content being shoved over their infrastructure.
Of course, those digital platforms pushed back hard.
As it is, EU Telecoms are pretty much in order from a EU perspective, save for the continued abuse of smaller players. There are still enough of them to guarantee competition, they are under frequency band control (which they don't own), they aren't creating the core infrastructure and often have to share that infrastructure with direct competitors.
On the other hand, providers like Facebook are laying infrastructure (undersea fibre cables etc) and we all know the pitfalls of infrastructure providers being responsible for the services that run on it.
When Facebook was in early stage, MySpace is the king. Where are they now?
And No. I don’t like Tiktok a single bit.