AP News and over 170 US outlets quote Gareth Mills on the Google EU monopoly ruling
min readGoogle has lost its final legal challenge against the European Union's top court for giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results, ending a long-running antitrust case that came with a 2.4 billion fine.
The ruling is said to have helped jumpstart an era of intensifying scrutiny for Big Tech companies.
Gareth Mills, Partner, comments on the ruling for AP News and is subsequently quoted in over 170 US media outlets:
Whilst the size of the fine is eye catching, the ruling is definitely not an unexpected outcome and reflects the growing confidence with which competition regulators worldwide are tackling the perceived excesses of the big tech companies. The fact that the top European appeal court has been willing to back the legal rationale and the level of fine will undoubtedly embolden the competition regulators further.
Over the past 24 months a series of competition law rulings and cases in the EU, US, UK (and wider) have shown that there is going to be a different level of scrutiny and enforcement of existing and newly minted laws and regulations that put consumer protection and consumer choice at the heart of the regulatory decision making process . Whether competition regulators are prepared to move on from large regulatory fines to proposed demergers of different business groups or compelled restructurings remains to be determined: but what was perhaps unthinkable even 10 years ago now seems very much on the table.
