To Rein In Big Tech, EU Thinks Privacy, Not Prices

Europe has taken the lead among democracies in policing the web business. With a mixture of legal actions and new rules tailored for the digital world, the European Union and its member states are trying to rein in the mostly American companies that dominate the internet and social media. Some critics say the actions don’t go far enough or come too late to meaningfully change the online landscape. But they’re already providing a regulatory roadmap for places such as South Korea and California.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager and her counterparts at national regulators are going after behavior they say tilts the playing field or locks out competitors, such as favoring certain apps on a smartphone screen. They’re also looking at data -- the currency of the online era -- and how companies use it to make money and gain competitive advantage. That’s different from traditional antitrust enforcement, which focuses on whether monopolies harm customers by, say, forcing them to pay higher prices. The older approach doesn’t fit when the companies in question, such as Amazon.com Inc. or Google parent Alphabet Inc., play in dozens of niche markets and drive down consumer prices or offer services for free.