London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Jul 31, 2025

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.
Comments

Oh ya 5 year ago
Biden will be lucky if he is not indicted by election day with the emails of his son drug addicted hunter hitting the news. Joey will likely be charged with treason for selling his office.. I stopped reading this story after line 5 as we can all see it is BS thinking sleepy has a chance

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Former Judge Charged After Drunk Driving Crash Kills Comedian in Brazil
Jeff Bezos hasn’t paid a dollar in taxes for decades. He makes billions and pays $0 in taxes, LEGALLY
China Increases Use of Exit Bans Amid Rising U.S. Tensions
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Procter & Gamble to Raise U.S. Prices to Offset One‑Billion‑Dollar Tariff Cost
House Republicans Move to Defund OECD Over Global Tax Dispute
Botswana Seeks Controlling Stake in De Beers as Anglo American Prepares Exit
Trump Administration Proposes Repeal of Obama‑Era Endangerment Finding, Dismantling Regulatory Basis for CO₂ Emissions Limits
France Opens Criminal Investigation into X Over Algorithm Manipulation Allegations
A family has been arrested in the UK for displaying the British flag
Mel Gibson refuses to work with Robert De Niro, saying, "Keep that woke clown away from me."
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.
The British propaganda channel BBC News lies again.
Deputy attorney general's second day of meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell has concluded
Controversial March in Switzerland Features Men Dressed in Nazi Uniforms
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
Thai Civilian Death Toll Rises to 12 in Cambodian Cross-Border Attacks
TSUNAMI: Trump Just Crossed the Rubicon—And There’s No Turning Back
Over 120 Criminal Cases Dismissed in Boston Amid Public Defender Shortage
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
Trump Announces $550 Billion Japanese Investment and New Trade Agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
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
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
×