The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legislation on its own companies.
Not to discredit the rest of what you're saying, because it is true the EU has jurisdiction and that anti-trust is a lost art in many places in the world. Still, saying Google Ireland 'alone' is a bit funny when Google (like all multinationals) is known to take advantage of Ireland's tax laws to funnel as much of their EU business through.
Whatever money Google is making in Ireland isn't just what they're making from the Irish market, it's also from whatever they're making everywhere else in the EU who's origins are ambiguous enough to not be attached to any single country.
https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/
If they weren't already in the country for accounting purposes, they might choose different locations for offices.
€50bln is still a huge amount, but based on the phrasing of that comment you'd assume we were talking about figures well over €1t!
On one hand, if Google simply restructured, spun off or sold its EU ad business the competitive landscape wouldn't change that much. I'm not sure whether a new European competitor could ever become a peer to Google if it could only compete in the EU market because of the network effects in the ad business.
Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? Also how would the EU enforce rules outside of its geography? How complaint would the US court system be in enforcing European decisions?
The only reason they speak about Google is because Google does business in the EU.
That's already what the USA does to global companies operating inside the US. That's exactly how Cuba has been under a blockade from the US, for example...
With sanctions the US can declare that third parties must choose between doing business with the US and Cuba / ZTE. Because of it's large economy the US would be confident that most of those parties would choose to choose the US over the company / small country.
Antitrust enforcement is many ways more difficult than sanctions enforcement because third parties must be compelled in 'how' rather than 'whether' they do business with a company.
Even the US would've struggled to break up ZTE / Huawei etc into smaller companies across every jurisdiction for antitrust. Doing so in China would've obviously been impossible but even enforcing this in the Gulf States & South Korea would've stretched the limits of US power.
If Google left the EU entirely there’d be even fewer competitors in the digital ads space. Depending on the segment Google’s market share would likely go to Bing, Facebook or TikTok.
The EU wants to increase the market competition, but frustratingly antitrust enforcement may not be effective and might even go in the opposite direction.
This may be true in the very short term, but leaving a big hole in the market like that creates an opportunity for new players that would have otherwise avoided the space because it was controlled by a monopoly.
I don't follow your argument.
Of course, if Google only makes the change in the EU, it doesn't much change the landscape outside of the EU. Although there's a chance for better competition in the EU to give another player a foothold, which then helps them gain usage elsewhere (perhaps from global customers who like the results in Europe and try it globally)
The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 and is asking for pretty much the same disinvestment for pretty much the same reasons. The EU is trailing the US by two years here.
I'm eagerly awaiting the trove of patriotic comments which will undoubtedly follow the posting of such an article and will most likely entirely miss the point as usual.
While true, 2.5 years later there is still no action. In that same time period, the E.U. released the largest anti-monopoly technology law in its history, the Digital Markets Act. This will take effect near the end of the year and impact all major tech companies. I think it's clear that U.S. antitrust is ineffective at present.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash#Evidence_of_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou
China then "co-incidentally" arrested 2 Canadians.
The whole thing is a shit show and it would be better for everyone if countries were more reasonable and agreed to avoid a "race to the bottom"
and also just to be clear, I think this is equally bad when everyone does it
It should not follow that placing a service on the web makes you subject to the jurisdiction of anyone who chooses to use it.
Countries can and do pass laws about whom their citizens can trade with. It seems like that is a better route than inventing jurisdiction over foreign companies.
A great book about that era is "Goliath" by Matt Stoller.
Previous attempts to nationalize companies have not, as far as I know, been a shining success?
Only 1/2 /s there...
Not all nationalization is uncompensated, even in the real world. Further, you can imagine very fair ways, long term, to nationalize companies by e.g. requiring them to pay a wealth tax in the form of equity.
> civil asset forfeiture: enables a government to seize property and other assets belonging to persons suspected of committing a crime
The suggestion being that being wildly successful should be a crime.
You do not want your government to basically have a permanent monopoly on everything. This just gives power to authoritarian to rise.
Personally, I suspect that the 20 companies each at 1% GDP will out perform the 20% company in most or even all markets. (Setting aside the issue of relative GDP between nations.)
Often, the bazaar is more effective than the cathedral.
What’s the monopoly here? There are tons of successful ad companies.
EU antitrust law is grounded in harm to companies. If there are many companies, but one has sewn up the market so strongly that others can't really have a chance to prosper, the EU will step in.
American antitrust law is grounded in harm to consumers. The US regulators won't go after a successful ad company because other ad companies say it's too hard to compete with them; it'll go after them if consumers say "We don't have any choice but to do business with X, and X's prices are too high / X is too exclusive / X is only doing business with us in market sector A if we agree to use them also for market sector B."
That additional bar to regulation means the EU may very well have cause to act before the US does if Google is big enough to muscle around other ad agencies and set the terms by which they can exist, even if they do exist.
For example, the justice department found slides from a project that favored its buyside customers when running supposedly impartial auctions on the sell side - in layman’s terms, brazenly fucking over their competitors. Allegedly.
The best part is of course that the google engineers named it “project bernanke” after the Fed chairman, since they thought of it like QE, I.e. “giving out free money” to people who used their buyside products. I’m still not sure if that was a criticism of QE or if they’re honestly that submerged in the Google Kool-Aid…
All of that is small potatoes to the main way in which google is a monopoly though: they run the only ad exchange. Trust me, it helps. Facebook spent many billions trying to stand up a competitor and ultimately gave up, which should tell you how valuable that privilege is