The European Union (EU) on Wednesday hit Google with a record-breaking €4.34 billion ($5.06 billion) antitrust fine and ordered the tech giant to make changes that will scale back its dominance of the mobile phone market.
Should Google be broken up? “The answer is yes.”
Characterizing the move as “the EU’s sharpest rebuke yet to the power of a handful of tech giants,” the Wall Street Journal reported:
“These practices have denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete on the merits. They have denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in the important mobile sphere,” declared EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. “This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.”
Concluding that Google has “imposed illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators” since 2011, the European Commission warned in a statement that “Google must now bring the conduct effectively to an end within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to five percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.”
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