Who is she?
Margrethe Vestager, a Danish politician, is perhaps the world’s most famous (or infamous, depending on where you stand) international regulatory celebrity, who is currently serving as the European Commissioner for Competition.
Known for aggressively pursuing big cases against Silicon Valley giants, she has been described as "the Rich World’s Most Powerful Trustbuster".
In her past 4 years she has investigated American tech firms, ordering them to pay billions of dollars in fines and back taxes.
Her rulings against Apple, Facebook, Google, Qualcomm have positioned the European Union, rather than Washington, as the world’s de facto Big Tech regulator.
In a rapidly expanding information economy, she believes the control of data is a new regulatory frontier. Her attention; right now; is on data privacy, and whether it is possible to regulate how technology companies share and profit from users’ personal information.
Till now, she not only concentrated on how a range of companies use, or abuse, their market dominance - but also emerged as a major voice of warning about the effect of tech firms on our habits, our privacy, our ability to make human connections and even democracy itself.
What is she currently up to?
She is about to investigate Apple’s planned acquisition of the music-identification app Shazam. What interests her about the transaction is not the amount of money at stake, but the amount of data. She is trying to solve this question: “What will happen when the data that Apple holds combines with the data from Shazam?”
How did it all start?
“Europe is acting to enforce antitrust laws where the U.S. is not,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, who feels that American regulators dropped the ball when they decided not to pursue a case against Google in 2013 (Yelp is a longtime Google antagonist). “Ironically, many of the complainants in the E.U. antitrust case against Google are U.S. companies, pursuing justice in Europe precisely because the U.S., has not acted,” he said in an email.
What have been her recent activities?
[1]
In 2016, Ms. Vestager ordered Ireland to reclaim $15.5B in back taxes from Apple, saying that the company had illegally received a tax break that was not available to others. Apple has begun paying the money into an escrow account, but both the company and Ireland have appealed the decision. They say it ignores how much tax Apple has already paid to Ireland, misrepresents the tax rate the company is subject to there, and reflects either a willful misreading or an ignorance of tax law.
[2]
Last June, Vestager fined Google $2.8B, after concluding that it had unfairly used its search engine to favor its services over those of its rivals. It was the largest such penalty in the European Commission’s history, and more than double similar fines levied by the United States.
[3]
Last May, she fined Facebook $131M, after concluding that it had misled the European authorities about its acquisition of the messaging service WhatsApp. And in January, she fined the American chip maker Qualcomm €997 million, or about $1.2 billion, saying it had abused its market dominance to shut out competitors.
Are there more elephants in the room?
Other jurisdictions are following Europe’s regulatory lead.
Brazil, among other countries, has begun an antitrust case against Google, and one of the search giant’s Brazilian competitors said last summer that it would use the European arguments in its own lawsuit.
The state of Missouri opened an investigation into whether Google violated the state’s antitrust and consumer protection laws.
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Margrethe Vestager, a Danish politician, is perhaps the world’s most famous (or infamous, depending on where you stand) international regulatory celebrity, who is currently serving as the European Commissioner for Competition.
Known for aggressively pursuing big cases against Silicon Valley giants, she has been described as "the Rich World’s Most Powerful Trustbuster".
In her past 4 years she has investigated American tech firms, ordering them to pay billions of dollars in fines and back taxes.
Her rulings against Apple, Facebook, Google, Qualcomm have positioned the European Union, rather than Washington, as the world’s de facto Big Tech regulator.
In a rapidly expanding information economy, she believes the control of data is a new regulatory frontier. Her attention; right now; is on data privacy, and whether it is possible to regulate how technology companies share and profit from users’ personal information.
Till now, she not only concentrated on how a range of companies use, or abuse, their market dominance - but also emerged as a major voice of warning about the effect of tech firms on our habits, our privacy, our ability to make human connections and even democracy itself.
What is she currently up to?
She is about to investigate Apple’s planned acquisition of the music-identification app Shazam. What interests her about the transaction is not the amount of money at stake, but the amount of data. She is trying to solve this question: “What will happen when the data that Apple holds combines with the data from Shazam?”
How did it all start?
“Europe is acting to enforce antitrust laws where the U.S. is not,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, who feels that American regulators dropped the ball when they decided not to pursue a case against Google in 2013 (Yelp is a longtime Google antagonist). “Ironically, many of the complainants in the E.U. antitrust case against Google are U.S. companies, pursuing justice in Europe precisely because the U.S., has not acted,” he said in an email.
What have been her recent activities?
[1]
In 2016, Ms. Vestager ordered Ireland to reclaim $15.5B in back taxes from Apple, saying that the company had illegally received a tax break that was not available to others. Apple has begun paying the money into an escrow account, but both the company and Ireland have appealed the decision. They say it ignores how much tax Apple has already paid to Ireland, misrepresents the tax rate the company is subject to there, and reflects either a willful misreading or an ignorance of tax law.
[2]
Last June, Vestager fined Google $2.8B, after concluding that it had unfairly used its search engine to favor its services over those of its rivals. It was the largest such penalty in the European Commission’s history, and more than double similar fines levied by the United States.
[3]
Last May, she fined Facebook $131M, after concluding that it had misled the European authorities about its acquisition of the messaging service WhatsApp. And in January, she fined the American chip maker Qualcomm €997 million, or about $1.2 billion, saying it had abused its market dominance to shut out competitors.
Are there more elephants in the room?
Other jurisdictions are following Europe’s regulatory lead.
Brazil, among other countries, has begun an antitrust case against Google, and one of the search giant’s Brazilian competitors said last summer that it would use the European arguments in its own lawsuit.
The state of Missouri opened an investigation into whether Google violated the state’s antitrust and consumer protection laws.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
Source:
NYtimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/margrethe-vestager-silicon-valley-data-privacy.html
