Editorial Board
Europe’s Attacks on Google Are Backfiring
A misguided antitrust ruling will cost European citizens. Not that regulators seem to care.
Enough already.
Photographer: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images
You have to hand it to Europe’s regulators. They rarely miss a chance to antagonize an American tech company, no matter what the cost to their own people.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced that it will start charging phone-makers that want to pre-install some of its apps and services for devices sold in Europe. This was the entirely predictable result of an antitrust ruling by the European Commission in July, in which it imposed a record $5 billion fine on Google and demanded that it shape up without specifying exactly how.