Big fines can change Big Tech

Multimillion-euro fines can force Big Tech companies to change their behaviour despite their deep pockets, according to French Competition Authority President Isabelle de Silva. She does not believe sanctions could be played down as merely “the cost of doing business,” breaking away from the consensus in the European Union, where competition officials have struggled for years to contain the market power of Big Tech despite levying billions of euros of penalties. Since June 2021, her office has hit Google with €720 million in fines in two separate cases. The first was related to the company's advertising technology business, with investigators mapping out how Google leveraged its different roles in selling online banner ads to disadvantage competitors, and the second came after Google failed to follow an order to reach a fair deal with the country’s publishers over payment for their content. The French Competition Authority had so far been the only watchdog able to extract a fine from Google without an appeal, she said. De Silva pushed back at the idea that regulation kills innovation—a notion advanced by powerful tech lobbyists in Brussels—and said Google and other very large platforms would still have the ability to generate profits even after tougher rules were enacted in Brussels in 2022.