New EU Competition Chief Aims to Continue Effort to Break Up Google

The European Union’s new competition chief, Teresa Ribera, reportedly said that a breakup of Google is still a possibility.

Ribera said that divestments can keep Big Tech companies from gaining too much market power and that she aims to build on the “legacy” of her predecessor, Margrethe Vestager, who favored divestments, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Speaking with Bloomberg Television, Ribera said of the Google case: “It’s something that is of course on the table, and we try to work together with other relevant competition authorities worldwide, including the U.S. competition authorities.”

Both Vestager and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have urged a breakup of Google, with Vestager favoring divestment of the company’s advertising technology (AdTech) arm and the DOJ seeking a forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser and other moves to lessen its alleged dominance in online search, according to the report.

Google addressed the DOJ’s call for the company to divest its Chrome browser in a Nov. 21 blog post, calling the proposal “radical” and saying it would undermine the quality of the company’s products and bring about “government micromanagement of Google Search.”

“DOJ had a chance to propose remedies related to the issue in this case: search distribution agreements with Apple, Mozilla, smartphone OEMs and wireless carriers,” the post said. “Instead, DOJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership. DOJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the court’s decision. It would break a range of Google products — even beyond Search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives.”

The company made a formal response to the EU’s threat to break up its AdTech arm in December 2023, calling the allegation that this is the only way to restore competition in the sector “flawed.”

Earlier, Dan Taylor, vice president for global ads at Google, wrote in a June 2023 blog post that there is “competitive pricing, lively innovation and robust competition” in the digital advertising market.

“We look forward to showing how our ad tech tools help make the internet open, and accessible — and how breaking them would diminish the availability of free, ad-supported content that benefits everyone.”