Why the European Antitrust Case Against Google Might or Might Not Matter

Margrethe Vestager must have been getting a little antsy. The European Commission antitrust boss has been relatively quiet lately even as her British counterpart has been throwing punches at big tech companies, including by forcing Meta Platforms to divest Giphy and then blocking Microsoft’s purchase of Activision. In contrast, the Europeans said they were OK with the Activision deal going through (Brad Smith is sooo charming!). So maybe it’s not surprising that today the Europeans have knuckled back down on their anti–big tech war with an action to force Alphabet’s Google to divest some of its ad tech business. 

The Europeans have concluded, in a preliminary way, that Google favors its own “online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers,” it said in a statement of objections. This is no small matter. Google controls the tools most commonly used by both websites selling ad space and marketers buying ad space on websites across the internet. On top of that, it also controls the dominant ad exchange, where buyers and sellers “meet in real time, typically via auctions, to buy and sell display ads,” as the Europeans put it. You don’t have to be a European regulator born with a tech-hating gene to think this is a problem. Indeed, the U.S. antitrust police got there first. The Department of Justice sued Google in January on much the same grounds. As my colleague Jessica Lessin wrote in January, the feds’ case is strong.