Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

Europe and America are taking on the tech giants. Britain needs to join the fight

Europe and America are taking on the tech giants. Britain needs to join the fight

It’s time to address monopoly data capitalism, which has been turbo-charged by Covid-19, forcing the world to live and work online. A Joe Biden presidency – increasingly likely – and an EU unhampered by British reluctance to do anything bold to reform or even tax a monopolistic private sector are set to make common cause.
The government is a bystander to attempts to break up the Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple monopolies

They will act in sync to attack the now bewildering monopoly power of the hi-tech giants by tackling its foundation – the simultaneous owning of pivotal digital platforms and the unbridled provision of the services on them.

Together, they will go on to reclaim the operation of the internet and enlarge individual control of personal data. Moreover, Biden, if he fulfils his campaign pledges to challenge shareholder-value-driven US business, act on climate crisis and enlarge union rights, will Europeanise the US economy to make it more friendly to this reform agenda. It will be a sea change – with Britain a marginalised bystander.

In the past 10 days, both the powerful House judiciary committee and the EU commission, under pressure from the French and Dutch governments, have signalled a readiness to challenge Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon to the point of breaking them up. The EU has been circling round the possibility of separating the “gatekeeper” platforms from their owners’ capacity to favour the selling of their own goods and services on them, which is a crucial step on the way to breaking them up.

But it is a first for the commission to be challenged so publicly by a joint paper from two member governments to do just that – and to go even further and faster if necessary. The initiative was quickly backed by Germany.

The EU’s capacity to act unilaterally on US companies is of course limited and Donald Trump has been fierce in warning the EU against extending its ambitions to US companies. In June, he actually threatened a trade war over the EU’s readiness to sanction digital taxes on the Big Four from its member states. It is a threat that has so intimidated the enfeebled Brexit British that last week it was reported that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, would excuse Amazon from a proposed British digital tax.

But a Biden administration would change the entire dynamic. It was the majority Democrats on the judiciary committee who made the running in this landmark congressional report and, even though the Republicans did not sign up for all the remedies, they shared the same analysis. This is one of the few areas in which there is a bipartisan consensus. Big tech, notwithstanding the great benefits it has brought to US society, has grown over-powerful, arrogant and monopolistic.

It is predatory. It charges exorbitant fees. It extracts valuable data. It snuffs out rivals. “These firms,” wrote the committee members, “wield their dominance in ways that erode entrepreneurship, degrade Americans’ privacy online and undermine the vibrancy of the free and diverse press. The result is less innovation, fewer choices for consumers and a weakened democracy.”

Amen to that. It also mirrors the thinking in Brussels. If the EU were to move to, say, prohibit a planned takeover by a hi-tech giant of a potential tech challenger, outlaw favouring in-house products and services, do more to protect data privacy or insist the platforms get opened up, it will find a US only too ready to do the same.

The committee was especially incensed by the lordly attitude to giving evidence of Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai, respectively the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google.

As it tried to elicit from them answers on whether Apple abused its monopoly with its App store, about Facebook’s monopoly of online advertising, on whether Amazon used information garnered from third sellers on its platforms to help its in-house sales or on how Google exploits its global control of internet search, the committee got short shrift.

The answers, it said, were “often evasive and non-responsive, raising fresh questions about whether they believe they are beyond the reach of democratic oversight”. But the CEOs had no choice but to be evasive: they could not answer honestly without acknowledging the truths behind the questioning.

The proposed remedies are sweeping, reflected in the Franco-Dutch paper to the EU commission. Anti-trust and competition law, the backbone of ensuring fair play in a market economy, is too flat-footed, too slow and fails to get ahead of the curve. Too many challengers have been eliminated by takeovers that should have been stopped, anticipating the impact on future competition rather than judging it in the here and now.

Platforms should be prohibited from operating in adjacent lines of business. All products and services from whatever source should have equal access to the platforms, “self-preferencing” should be outlawed and there should be complete “interoperability” – computer systems able to work with each other.

The law should be framed to allow private companies to launch malpractice suits of their own. Newspaper groups should be able to come together and use the new legal framework jointly to insist on fairer, less predatory terms for the use of their journalistic and advertising content.

The Johnson government seems either blind to all of this or judges it of secondary importance besides its ambitions for “global Britain” free from the EU yoke, even if it is attacking predatory monopoly power or agreeing, as it did at last week’s EU summit, to create Gaia-x to store and manage EU-wide data in the cloud.

Our Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has little of the ambition of the EU or the US competition authorities and when its former chair Andrew Tyrie tried to make it a consumer champion, observing that the digital platforms were too powerful and could “destroy a small business with a change to an algorithm”, he was ignored. In June, he resigned in protest and the CMA has regressed to its comfort zone – technocratic caution – with no ministerial challenge to behave differently. As the EU and US recast digital capitalism, the truth is brutal: Brexit Britain has made itself irrelevant, a country to be plundered.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
House Republicans Move to Defund OECD Over Global Tax Dispute
France Opens Criminal Investigation into X Over Algorithm Manipulation Allegations
Trump Steamrolls EU in Landmark Trade Win: US–EU Trade Deal Imposes 15% Tariff on European Imports
ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman says people share personal info with ChatGPT but don’t know chats can be used as court evidence in legal cases.
Intel Reports Revenue Beats but Sees 81% Rise in Losses
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
Tulsi Gabbard Unveils Evidence Alleging Political Manipulation of Intelligence During Trump Administration
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Trump Announces Coca-Cola to Shift to Cane Sugar in U.S. Production
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A New Open-Source AI Model
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
EU Delays Retaliatory Tariffs Amid New U.S. Threats on Imports
Trump Proposes Supplying Arms to Ukraine Through NATO Allies
US Opens First Rare Earth Mine in Over 70 Years in Wyoming
Bitcoin Reaches New Milestone of $116,000
Severe Heatwave Claims 2,300 Lives Across Europe
Declining Beer Consumption Signals Cultural Shift in Germany
Emails Leaked: How Passenger Luggage Became a Side Income for Airport Workers
Polish MEP: “Dear Leftists - China is laughing at you, Russia is laughing, India is laughing”
Western Europe Records Hottest June on Record
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
China’s Central Bank Consults European Peers on Low-Rate Strategies
France Requests Airlines to Cut Flights at Paris Airports Amid Planned Air Traffic Controller Strike
Poland Implements Border Checks Amid Growing Migration Tensions
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Amazon Reaches Milestone with Deployment of One Millionth Robot
Yulia Putintseva Calls for Spectator Ejection at Wimbledon Over Safety Concerns
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
×