, Columnist
Google Isn't the Problem. U.S. and EU Regulators Are.
Nobody wins when Americans and Europeans clash over how to restrain monopoly power.
Eye of the beholder.
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After the news broke on Tuesday that the European Union was fining Google $2.7 billion for abusing its monopoly power, I went to the Google search page and typed in “flight to Los Angeles.” I knew that Google has a comparison shopping service, but I’d never paid much attention to it before, preferring to go directly to Orbitz or Expedia when I needed to book a flight.
The first result on my screen—in a box three times the size of a typical Google search result—was Google’s own travel shopping services. After that came a series of travel sites that were competing with Google: Kayak, TripAdvisor, Orbitz, Expedia and cheapflights.com, in that order.