Google – big fine, little reasoning (so far)

The European Commission aims high and seems to like hitting big companies mainly because they are big. 

As expected by many, yesterday the European Commission handed a fresh decision to Alphabet, the holding company of Google, and almost all the headlines went to the new record fine reached in the competition enforcement in Europe. Although commissioner Vestager took some time to describe the decision, we were not able to know, at this stage, why the record fine has been issued and what is likely to follow in the mobile operating systems world. 

When asked by journalists how the level of the fine has been set, the too confident Vestager made a statement which is unacceptable in an area where presumption of innocence applies and the standard of proof is always high: ”Then we put that into our matrix and turn the handle. And then — poof — comes out a number”. What?? We expect more than this, with arguments such as the need to deter similar conduct.

On the substance, before seeing the full length of the reasoning used by the European Commission, I can only say that it is obvious that the powerful EU competition enforcer uses old measures for new clothes and is stuck in its approach that ”big is bad”(ok, that dominant companies have special responsibilities), using the same narrow lenses as in Intel, in spite of a recent ECJ ruling which warned that there is no per se abuse of dominance under the EU law. No specific word about the consumer welfare – and the possible losses incurred/benefits brought to them through the three behaviours sanctioned by the European Commission.