The European Commission has been recently investigating Google for several antitrust charges, derived from the way the company handles its search engine’s results and how it allegedly forces users to use their products, generating with that, higher profits. According to the European Commission, Google has been involved in monopolistic practices, which have led them into taking more serious actions to solve this once and for all. A completely new area will possibly be created according to the European Commission, this new sector will be in charge of regulating how much influence internet-based companies like Google or Facebook have over the web. It seems like the European Commission is really concerned over antitrust issues regarding major tech companies, as it is not the first time that the EC has targeted one, just about 15 years ago the European Commission had Microsoft under investigation too, for the same kind of practices.
Google has been under the radar of the European Commission for over two weeks now, and it seems that the company’s problems have just begun. The European Commission is concerned about the amount of power that some websites (Mostly based in the United States) have, the EC strongly believes that this power, has become too much. Internet-based companies that have a direct influence over the economy are the ones that are going to be affected, websites like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, among others, will face a whole new area of the European Commission, one that will be completely focused on keeping these companies’ power and influence to a minimum. Back in February of this same year, the European Commission prepared a document aimed for G¼nther Oettinger, Digital Commissioner. This document listed 32 companies or “online platforms” as the document calls them, which are known to have major power over the economy. The document mentioned the need for a “supervision framework”.
The new supervision framework’s job will be to make sure said companies will not take part in activities against antitrust laws. One of the main goals of the new entity will be avoiding what Google is accused of doing today, giving priority to its own services over the ones from another company. This will be achieved by giving the new supervision framework, power over how the companies use data.