Antitrust Nominee in Europe Promises Scrutiny of Big Tech Companies

The nominee to become the next antitrust chief for the European Union has said that keeping a close eye on American technology titans like Google and Apple will be among her top priorities if she is confirmed.

Margrethe Vestager, a former Danish economy minister, told lawmakers at the European Parliament that Google was “a business with a huge, huge, huge market share,” and she signaled that she would look more deeply into whether amassing data was a factor entrenching the strength of digital companies like Google. Personal data “is the new currency of the Internet,” Vestager told the Parliament’s influential Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. “We should engage in not only fact-finding but much deeper understanding of these markets.”