ANALYSIS – The European Commission and Google (2000-2026). From institutional inaction to the attempt at ex ante regulation of digital platforms
By François Souty, Head of the Economics Section at Le Diplomate Média
« The evils of excessive bigness are something distinct from and additional to the evils of monopoly. »
Louis D. Brandeis, Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914), chap. VIII, « A Curse of Bigness. »[1]
« Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet. »
Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness. Part A: A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, p. 2.
Executive Summary
The European Commission’s recent decision on Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a new step in an institutional relationship that began more than twenty-five years ago between the European Union and one of the major players in the global digital economy. Beyond the sanction itself, this decision raises an essential question: how can open markets be preserved when certain private operators have economic, technological and informational power comparable to that of sovereign players?
Google’s European history illustrates the difficulties of adapting competition law to digital transformations. Since the 2000s, the European Union has had Article 102 TFEU to control abuses of dominant positions. But network effects, data accumulation, multi-sided markets and ecosystem integration have made the application of these traditional categories more complex. Institutional prudence, which is legally understandable, has nevertheless contributed to the consolidation of dominant positions that have proved difficult to challenge at a later date.
The proceedings against Google under Article 102 TFEU marked a turning point. The Google Shopping, Android and AdSense cases established that large platforms could be sanctioned when they used their market power to promote their own services, impose constraints on their partners or limit the contestability of markets. However, they have also revealed the limits of an exclusively corrective approach: ex-post sanctions can intervene after market structures have been profoundly, if not irreparably, transformed.
The DMA is the European response to this difficulty. It introduces a logic of ex ante regulation of systemic operators designated as gatekeepers. Without replacing traditional competition law, it is a distinct instrument of regulation that complements it with specific obligations designed to prevent certain practices before their effects become difficult to reverse. This break is essential: it is not the result of an inadequacy of traditional competition law, but of the recognition that it cannot, on its own, meet all the characteristics of digital markets.
However, the effectiveness of DMA remains an open question. Its success will depend on the Commission’s ability to apply it effectively in the face of companies with considerable financial, legal and technological resources. The recent decision against Google shows a new willingness to act, but its impact will have to be assessed beyond the amount of the penalty, in the light of its ability to really change behaviour and market structures.
This problem now goes beyond the European framework. The United States has itself initiated a return to a more aggressive antitrust, notably through the Department of Justice’s proceedings against Google. But this evolution does not mean convergence with the DMA: since 2025, the American administration has contested certain characteristics of European ex ante regulation and favoured an intervention mainly based on traditional antitrust law. China, on the other hand, is following a much more directly administrative path. The European Union thus defends its own model, combining competition law ex post enforcement, ex anteregulation and control of systemic players.
This transatlantic divergence gives the question of international cooperation a new dimension. Digital companies operate globally while regulatory powers remain largely territorial. Cooperation is therefore still necessary, but its prospects now appear uncertain. It would be premature to count on rapid transatlantic convergence at a time when the United States is challenging some of the foundations of the DMA. The work of the OECD and UNCTAD, as well as that of the International Competition Network, can nevertheless preserve spaces for dialogue, exchange of information and the exchange of experiences. However, the ICNmust be approached realistically, given its history strongly marked by the search for Euro-American convergence.
The analysis of Google‘s European saga thus leads to a nuanced conclusion. The European Commission deserves to be recognised for having gradually adapted its instruments and embarked, with the DMA, on a major evolution of its digital policy. But this progress should not mask either the initial delays or the limits of ex-post sanctions. Above all, the current difficulties of transatlantic cooperation should not lead the Union to abandon the application of legislation democratically adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. The DMA can and should be improved in the light of experience; its legitimacy and necessity cannot depend on a prior convergence with the American model.
The real issue of the DMA therefore goes beyond the mere sanction of the anticompetitive behaviour of the major platforms. The aim is to demonstrate that market democracies still have the institutional capacity to ensure that economic, technological and informational power remains compatible with freedom of competition, innovation and the general interest. In an environment where digital markets are evolving faster than institutional processes, international cooperation remains desirable, but it cannot become the condition for European action: the Union must be able to defend and enforce the rules that it has democratically set for itself, especially in the field of digital market regulation.
Keywords: Google ; Alphabet ; Digital Markets Act (DMA); Article 102 TFEU; abuse of dominant position; digital platforms; gatekeepers; competition; ex-postenforcement ; ex-ante regulation; European Commission; DG Competition; United States; DOJ; FTC; digital sovereignty; ECN; ICN; UNCTAD; OECD;
Introduction
The European Commission’s decision in the summer of 2026 to impose a major new penalty on Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) immediately drew attention to the growing confrontation between the European Union and one of the most powerful companies in the global digital economy.[2] However, the amount of this fine remains extremely low in relation to the group’s annual turnover (0.2%) and even lower in relation to its capitalization (0.05%). Beyond the legal or financial scope of this decision, it is above all a new chapter in a story that began more than twenty years ago: that of the gradual adaptation of the European institutions in the face of the emergence of digital platforms that have become systemic economic actors.[3]
The Google case thus appears to be a real laboratory for the transformation of competition law. It reveals the difficulties encountered by public authorities when they have to deal with companies whose power is based less on the possession of a traditional monopoly than on the combination of network effects, economies of scale, massive accumulation of data, vertical integration and the creation of ecosystems that are difficult to contest.
Founded in 1998, Google has become a central player in the global economy in less than a quarter of a century. Its search engine, advertising business, Android operating system, digital services and now artificial intelligence capabilities have gradually become an integrated whole, giving the company considerable influence in several key markets. However, this exceptional success raises a fundamental question: at what point does a competitive advantage resulting from innovation become a structural power that can have a lasting effect on the functioning of markets?
The history of relations between Google and the European Union allows us to observe the progressive response of the European institutions to this question. In the first period, the 2000s and early 2010s were marked by relative caution on the part of the European Commission, despite the growing warnings of certain economic players and the first official complaints lodged by companies (see second part), several European parliamentarians and certain national authorities. The difficulties of understanding numerical models, the partial inadequacy of traditional instruments and the complexity of the qualification of practices – due to the arguments of economic theory put forward by neoliberal economists at the time – have contributed to delaying a truly binding intervention.
This period of hesitation is all the more important as it coincides with the consolidation of Google’s business model. As the institutional debate progressed, the company strengthened its position through the cumulative effects characteristic of digital markets: more users, more data, improved services, increased attractiveness of the ecosystem and increased investment capacity.
From the mid-2010s, a change of perspective took place. The European Commission has initiated several major proceedings under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union on abuses of dominant positions. The Google Shopping, Android and AdSense cases resulted in considerable financial penalties and contributed to the development of important European case law. At the same time, several Member States have developing their own instruments to complement European law, particularly in the areas of economic dependence, unfair competition or enhanced control of companies considered to be structuring their markets.
However, the experience of these procedures is gradually revealing the limits of an exclusively corrective regulation. Ex post sanctions, even significant ones, sometimes appear insufficient to quickly change behaviours that are deeply integrated into the business models of the major platforms. This awareness has led the European Union to adopt a new approach with the Digital Markets Act or DMA, based not only on the sanction of the abuses observed, but on the prior imposition of specific obligations on operators designed as « gatekeepers ».
The recent decision concerning Google must therefore be seen in a broader context. It comes at a time when the United States itself has taken several actions against major digital platforms, through the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), some state authorities and important legislative debates in the US Congress. These parallel developments underline the existence of a problem common to the great democracies: how to ensure the effectiveness of economic antitrust law in the face of private companies with considerable financial, technological and geopolitical power?
The study of the « Google saga » is therefore not only an analysis of a succession of competition decisions. It allows us to question more broadly the capacity of the European institutions to adapt their legal instruments to the profound transformations of contemporary capitalism in the Digital Age.
The article will analyze this evolution in three stages. It will first show how the European Union has gradually become aware of the challenges linked to the emergence of dominant digital platforms and the limits of its initial action. It will then study the rise of traditional competition law, the major proceedings against Google, the additional national responses and the developments in case law. Finally, it will examine the DMA as an attempt at a paradigm shift, its first results, its limits and the increased difficulties of enhanced cooperation between European and American authorities, which is nevertheless necessary.
Beyond the Google case alone, this analysis leads to an essential question: do democracies today have the necessary instruments to guarantee a true economic rule of law when certain private companies acquire a power comparable to that of major institutional actors such as sovereign states?
I. The difficult European awareness of the emergence of a new digital economic power (2000-2014).
The Google decision issued by the European Commission in July 2026 as part of the DMA could give the impression of a public action that is now fully structured in the face of the major digital platforms. Such a reading would however be reductive. It would lead us to forget that this decision is the provisional outcome of a particularly long institutional process, marked for more than a decade by hesitation, trial and error and sometimes real inertia.
This first period 2000-2014 is essential to understanding the current situation. It corresponds to the phase during which Google gradually builds a dominant position of an unprecedented nature. Unlike industrial or service companies traditionally covered by competition law, an in-depth competitive analysis shows that the American firm is developing a business model based on particularly powerful network effects, the massive exploitation of data, the continuous improvement of algorithms, the apparent free of charge of many services and the gradual integration of complementary activities. Dominance is no longer solely the result of holding a high market share; it becomes cumulative, self-reinforcing and based on the mastery of digital ecosystems.
Faced with this change, the European institutions initially appeared disarmed. Traditional competition law instruments have been designed to deal with relatively stable markets, where the boundaries between products, competitors and consumers (the definition of the « relevant market » in legal language) can be identified with some precision. The digital economy challenges many of these traditional categories. How do you define a relevant market when a service is offered for free? How can market power based on data rather than prices be measured?[4] How can we assess the competitive effects of integrated ecosystems linking search engines, advertising, operating systems, mapping, video, Internet browsing and soon artificial intelligence?
However, this difficulty of analysis does not in itself explain the slowness of the European reaction. From the mid-2000s, numerous warnings were made by competing companies, academics, practitioners, several national competition authorities and, above all, by a growing number of European parliamentarians, particularly from Germany, who called on the Commission to exercise more resolutely the powers conferred on it by the Treaties. However, these alerts remained for a long time without a fully satisfactory response. Several procedures have been opened, commitments are being discussed, but the dominant impression remains that of a cautious, sometimes hesitant intervention, even as Google‘s economic power continues to grow.
This first part will analyze the genesis of this situation through three complementary perspectives. It will first show how Google has built, in less than a decade, an economic power based on profoundly new characteristics for competition law (A). It will then examine the first warning signs, the doctrinal debates and the parliamentary initiatives that have gradually highlighted the inadequacies of the European response (B). Finally, it will examine the legal, economic, institutional and sometimes political reasons that explain the slowness of the Commission’s reaction, before the cycle of major litigation procedures of the mid-2010s began (C).
Beyond the Google case, this first period was a founding moment. It reveals how the adaptation of competition law to the transformations of digital capitalism depends not only on the quality of the legal instruments available, but also on the ability of institutions to identifiy and recognize the emergence of new forms of economic power early on.
A. The construction of an unprecedented digital economic power: Google or the emergence of a new model of competitive domination (1998-2008)
The history of Google‘s relationship with the European Union cannot be understood without looking back at the conditions under which the American company has gradually established itself as one of the main players in the global digital economy. The first years of its development have an essential characteristic: while European competition authorities continued to understand digital markets by means of categories largely inherited from the industrial economy, Google developed a profoundly original economic model, based on the combination of technological innovation, the apparent free of charge of services, the exploitation of data and network effects particularly powerful.[5]
Created in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then both doctoral students at Stanford University, Google was not originally the first search engine available on the Internet. Companies such as Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo!, Excite and Infoseek already occupied an important place in a market that was still emerging. Google‘s decisive innovation lies less in the idea of the search engine itself than in the quality of its results ranking algorithm (PageRank), which favors the relevance of answers according to the structure of hypertext links between websites. This innovation significantly improves the user experience and quickly helps to increase the attractiveness of the search engine.[6]
Google’s success, however, is not only the result of its technological performance. Very early on, the company adopted an original strategy consisting of offering its search engine free of charge to Internet users while developing an indirect business model based on targeted advertising. The launch of AdWords in 2000, followed by AdSense in 2003, marked a decisive step in this evolution. Advertisers no longer only pay for advertising space; they buy the ability to reach users based on their searches, interests, and, gradually, the data collected by Google on their digital behaviors. Advertising is thus becoming increasingly personalized, simultaneously improving the performance of advertising campaigns and the company’s revenue.[7]
This economic model inaugurates a particularly powerful cumulative logic. As the number of users of the search engine increases, Google collects more data to improve the relevance of its algorithms. Improved results in turn attract new users, increasing advertisers’ interest in the platform and increasing the financial resources available to invest in new services and technologies. Economists describe this phenomenon as a virtuous circle of direct and indirect network effects, in addition to considerable economies of scale linked to data processing and the development of digital infrastructure.[8]
This dynamic profoundly distinguishes Google from the companies traditionally encountered in classic competition cases. Economic power is no longer only linked to the ownership of physical assets, production capacity or a pricing policy. It is now based on the mastery of massive data, the ability to continuously improve learning algorithms and the gradual integration of complementary services within the same digital ecosystem. The boundary between the different markets is gradually becoming more difficult to identify: search engines, advertising, mapping, e-mail, Internet browsers, online video or mobile operating systems are part of a global strategy to increase user loyalty while continuously enriching the available data.
Google‘s IPO in August 2004 was a new step in this growth strategy. The financial resources now available allow the group to multiply investments in IT infrastructure and the acquisition of innovative companies. This acquisition policy quickly emerged as one of the company’s preferred instruments for development. Between 2001 and 2008, Google carried out several dozen mergers, some of which would be decisive for the future development of digital markets.[9]
These include the acquisition of Keyhole, which created Google Earth (2004), and the acquisition of Android Inc. (2005), which would pave the way a few years later for the world’s leading mobile operating system, the acquisition of YouTube (2006), which was set to become the world’s leading video delivery platform, as well as the acquisition of DoubleClick (2007), a major player in digital advertising technologies. Each of these operations may, taken in isolation, appear to be a relatively classic diversification. In fact, their combination reveals a particularly coherent integration strategy: each new service strengthens data collection capabilities, increases interactions between users and advertisers, and solidifies Google‘s position in several complementary segments of the digital economy.
At that time, few observers were still fully aware of the competitive consequences of this development. The analyses focus mainly on the immediate benefits provided to consumers: constant improvement of services, apparent freeness, acceleration of innovation and lower transaction costs. These positive effects are real and largely explain Google‘s exceptional attractiveness to the general public and companies alike. They also help to explain the relative caution of competition authorities, both American and European, faced with an economic model whose long-term effects remain largely unexplored at the time.
This founding period thus presents an essential characteristic for the understanding of the rest of our study. Google‘s rise to power is not the result of an overtly monopolistic strategy comparable to those encountered in certain industrial cases of the twentieth century. It is the result of the gradual combination of technological innovations, network effects, targeted acquisitions and massive investments in digital infrastructure. It is precisely these characteristics that make the application of traditional competition law instruments, which are largely developed for markets whose competitive mechanisms differ significantly from those of the digital economy, particularly delicate.[10]
It was in this context that, in the mid-2000s, the first questions began to appear about the competitive effects of Google‘s development. Initially limited to a few companies directly affected by certain commercial practices of the platform, these concerns gradually spread to the national authorities, the European Parliament and, later, to the European Commission itself.
The consolidation of the Google model is also based on a fundamental characteristic of digital markets: the ability of a dominant firm to gradually expand its influence from an initial market to adjacent sectors. This logic of horizontal and vertical expansion does not necessarily correspond, at first, to an explicit strategy of crowding out competitors; rather, it is the result of an economic dynamic in which the possession of an essential asset — in this case, privileged access to Internet users’ queries — makes it possible to develop a series of complementary activities. The search engine thus becomes the centre of a larger whole combining services, infrastructures and data.[11]
This development is particularly visible in the field of digital advertising. The traditional online advertising model, initially close to traditional advertising practices, is gradually evolving towards an automated bidding system that makes it possible to value each individual query. Google no longer simply sells advertising space: it organizes an infrastructure to connect users, advertisers and content providers. This economic architecture strengthens the platform’s position, as the quality of the service offered to advertisers depends directly on the quantity and quality of the data available, which is itself fed by the volume of users.[12]
This situation illustrates one of the major paradoxes of the digital economy: services can be offered free of charge to the end consumer while generating considerable economic value. The apparent gratuitousness in fact masks a complex economic relationship in which the user provides an essential resource — his attention, his data and his behaviors — which contributes to the creation of advertising value. This feature was later to pose significant difficulties to European competition law, traditionally built around the analysis of prices, production and direct commercial relations.[13]
From 2005-2006, Google took a new step by developing a real digital ecosystem. The acquisition of Android is a major strategic operation in this respect. As the mobile Internet begins to profoundly transform digital uses, mastering an operating system for smartphones allows Google to extend its influence beyond the Internet browser and the traditional search engine. Android is gradually becoming a key vector for the distribution of Google services, including Search, Maps, Gmail and Play Store, reinforcing the dependence of users and developers on the group’s ecosystem.[14]
Similarly, the acquisition of YouTube in 2006 demonstrates an early understanding of the future importance of digital content and associated behavioral data. The deal, initially viewed with caution by some analysts due to the high cost of the acquisition and the economic uncertainties surrounding the video platform, appears in retrospect to be one of Google‘s most important strategic choices. It allows the group to become a central player in the global circulation of audiovisual content and to further extend its hold on the digital advertising markets.[15]
The DoubleClick operation, announced in 2007 and authorised by the European Commission in 2008, is however a particular turning point. It is no longer just about access to users, but about the digital advertising infrastructure itself. DoubleClick has essential technologies for managing online ads and the relationships between publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. The merger between Google and DoubleClick then raises the first important questions about the combination of two sets of data and the risk of seeing the emergence of a privileged position for Google in the entire advertising value chain.[16]
The European Commission, like the U.S. FTC, nevertheless cleared the transaction after a thorough examination. This decision is understandable in view of the economic knowledge available at the time: the digital advertising market is still developing, the effects of the accumulation of data are still imperfectly understood and the potential benefits for consumers and advertisers appear significant. Nevertheless, with hindsight, it is an important moment in the construction of Google‘s future power, as it allows the group to occupy a central position in a sector that will gradually become strategic for the digital economy.[17]
However, it would be anachronistic to consider that the competition authorities should necessarily have fully anticipated the future consequences of this transaction. Competitive analysis must be placed in the context of the time. In 2007-2008, Google was still mainly perceived as an innovative company that had disrupted a market previously dominated by other players, and not as a global digital infrastructure capable of structuring several essential markets in the long term. The fundamental difficulty lies precisely in the early identification of mechanisms of economic power whose effects manifest themselves gradually and not immediately.
This difficulty partly explains why the first competitive concerns appear first among the players directly exposed to the transformations caused by Google. Some price comparison sites, specialized websites, content publishers and digital intermediaries are beginning to denounce a growing dependence on the search engine, whose algorithms can brutally affect their visibility and their business model. The relationship between Googleand its economic environment then begins to be analysed not only from the perspective of market dominance, but also from the perspective of a structural asymmetry between a platform controlling essential access and companies dependent on this access.[18]
It is precisely this evolution that will gradually transform the perception of Google in Europe. The company is no longer just considered as an innovative player offering high-performance services free of charge; It is gradually becoming an operator that can exert a decisive influence on the conditions of access to several digital markets. This transformation of the way Google is viewed constitutes the starting point for the institutional debates that will develop during the following period.
The period 1998-2008 thus appears to be one of the gradual construction of a new type of competitive advantage. Google‘s success is not based on a classic strategy of conquering an existing market by controlling costs or production capacities alone. It is the result of an original combination of technological innovation, network effects, data accumulation, diversification of services and the gradual constitution of an integrated digital ecosystem.
Overall, Table 1 below shows that the period 1998-2014 corresponds to the shift from a search-centric model to an integrated digital ecosystem, in which search, advertising, data, content, mobile, apps and some hardware services are mutually reinforcing. This transformation is essential to understand the subsequent difficulties encountered by competition law: cases concerning Google are gradually no longer about a single market, but about the interactions between several markets and several levels of the same digital infrastructure.
This dynamic largely explains why the company’s early years of development raised relatively few institutional concerns. The immediate benefits for users were considerable: improved access to information, free services, development of new digital uses and stimulation of innovation. In this initial phase, Google appears more as a driver of economic transformation than as a company likely to weaken competitive mechanisms in the long term.
Table 1: TIMELINE OF GOOGLE’S GLOBAL EXPANSION (1998-2014)
Google’s expansion has not been limited to the growth of its search engine. Between its creation in 1998 and 2014, the company has gradually built up an integrated whole combining search, advertising, mapping, video, mobile operating systems, browser, application services and data. This diversification has gradually transformed Google from a dominant search engine into a digital infrastructure present at several levels of the digital economy.
| Year | Main step | Economic and strategic scope |
| 1998 | Creation of Google by Larry Page and Sergey Brin | Implementation of the search engine based on the PageRank algorithm. |
| 2000 | Launch of AdWords | Development of the business model based on search advertising and gradual establishment of the group’s main source of revenue. |
| 2001 | Eric Schmidt became president and, in 2001, CEO | Gradual transition from a technology start-up to a structured global organization. |
| 2004 | Google IPO | Access to considerable financial resources to accelerate acquisitions, investments and diversification. |
| 2004-2005 | Acquisition of Keyhole and launch of Google Maps ; acquisition of Android Inc. in 2005 | Entry into digital mapping and then preparation of a structuring presence in mobile operating systems. |
| 2006 | Acquisition of YouTube | Extending the Google ecosystem to online video and creating a new source of data, audience and advertising revenue. |
| 2007 | Acquisition of DoubleClick | Decisive strengthening of Google ‘s presence in digital advertising and in the intermediation between advertisers and publishers. |
| 2008 | Launch of Chrome; first Android smartphones | Google‘s extension of the search engine and online services to the browser and mobile environment. |
| 2010 | Strong global growth of Android | Creation of a mobile ecosystem allowing Google to simultaneously control the operating system, applications, search and part of the advertising distribution. |
| 2011-2012 | Acquisition and integration of Motorola Mobility | Strengthening the control of the Android ecosystem and acquiring a large patent portfolio; In 2014, Googleannounced the sale of Motorola to Lenovo. |
| 2013 | Acquisition of Waze | Strengthening Google‘s position in mapping, navigation and location-based data services. |
| 2014 | Acquisition of Nest; sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo | Continued diversification into connected objects and refocusing of hardware investment on the Android ecosystem. |
However, as the company expands its influence beyond online search into digital advertising, content, mobile operating systems, and data infrastructure, the first questions arise. They do not initially come from European public authorities, but from actors directly confronted with the growing dependence created by the evolution of the digital ecosystem. Price comparison sites, content publishers, specialized platforms and innovative companies are beginning to denounce a situation in which access to a market depends more and more on a private intermediary controlling an infrastructure that has become essential.
The nature of the debate then gradually changed. The question is no longer just the economic success of an innovative company, but whether a dominant player can use the advantages accumulated in one market to strengthen its position in neighbouring markets and change the conditions of competition in the long term. It was in this context that the first structured criticisms of Google appeared, successively made by competitors, certain economists, several national competition authorities and finally the European institutions.
B. The first warning signs: competitors, the European Parliament, national authorities and legal writers in the face of growing questions about Google’s power (2008-2014)
Google’s rise to power did not immediately provoke a European institutional reaction comparable to that which had followed, in previous decades, the appearance of dominant positions in traditional industries. The period 2008-2014 was however a pivotal moment: the scattered questions about the functioning of the search engine and the company’s commercial practices gradually began to turn into a real competition policy debate.
This evolution is based on several converging phenomena. On the one hand, some economic operators consider that their dependence on the traffic generated by Google limits their ability to compete effectively with the platform. On the other hand, national competition authorities are starting to address the particular characteristics of digital markets and the risks associated with the central position of certain intermediaries. Finally, the European Parliament is gradually becoming an essential space for debate on the economic and political effects of the domination of the major American platforms.
This period is therefore fundamental because it reveals a growing gap between, on the one hand, the increasingly precise perception of the economic transformations brought about by digital platforms and, on the other hand, the relative caution of the European Commission, which is still attached to the traditional instruments of competition law. The debate that took place during these years already heralded the future evolution towards ex ante regulation: when abuse could be difficult to prove and the ex post procedures were likely to take place too late, the question of structural intervention gradually began to emerge.
1. The first complaints from competitors and the gradual discovery of a relationship of economic dependence. The first criticisms levelled at Google did not initially concern its entire business model. They mainly concern an issue that has become central later: that of the ability of a dominant platform to control access to the market for other companies.
The players concerned are mainly companies whose visibility depends on referencing in the search engine results. For these operators, a change in the ranking algorithm can lead to a sudden decrease in traffic, revenue and sometimes call into question the very existence of the business model. This situation leads some of them to consider that Google is no longer just a neutral technical intermediary, but a player capable of directly influencing the conditions of competition in neighbouring markets.[19]
The case of Foundem, a British price comparison engine, became emblematic of this period. The company claimed to have suffered a significant deterioration in its ranking in Google‘s organic results, which would have affected its economic development. Other players, including in the travel, e-commerce and specialty services sectors, were expressing similar concerns.[20]
These first challenges are of particular interest because they herald a fundamental difficulty that will run through the entire Google saga : how to legally qualify the behavior of a company that controls an infrastructure essential for access to the market without necessarily explicitly denying this access? The problem is no longer just a matter of traditional abuse through prices or direct exclusionary practices; It concerns the strategic use of a digital intermediary that has become essential.[21]
The notion of economic dependence then gradually takes on an increasing place in the analysis. Although it is not yet fully integrated into the reasoning of European competition law, it makes it possible to describe a new economic reality: some companies are not linked to Google by an exclusivity contract or a legal obligation, but by a practical dependence resulting from the concentration of Internet users’ uses around a platform that has become difficult to circumvent.
This situation raises an essential question: can a search engine be considered as a simple private infrastructure among others, or does it become, because of its intermediation role, an essential form of access to certain digital markets? This question is naturally reminiscent of previous debates about essential facilities, but it differs from them in the evolutionary and algorithmic nature of the power exercised.[22]
Thus, the first complaints against Google do not only denounce isolated behaviors; they gradually highlight a deeper transformation of economic power. Digital domination is no longer exercised solely through the mastery of a product or service, but through the ability to organize visibility, access and the circulation of value in an ecosystem.
2. The gradual entry of the European Parliament and national authorities into the debate: the awareness of a change in the nature of digital economic power. The changing perception of Google is not just the result of complaints from competitors. It is also part of a broader movement to reflect on the transformations of economic power in the digital age. From the late 2000s and early 2010s, several institutions began to consider that the large platforms were not simply new and particularly efficient economic players, but that they introduced new forms of dependence and intermediation.
The European Parliament is gradually playing an important role in this development. Its specialised committees, in particular the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), are becoming forums for discussion on the economic effects of digital platforms. Several MEPs, in particular German ones, express their concerns about the dominant position acquired by Google and call on the European Commission to look more closely at practices that may affect the competitive functioning of digital markets.[23]
This parliamentary mobilization is indicative of a deeper evolution: the Google issue is beginning to go beyond the traditional framework of a simple dispute between companies. It is gradually becoming a subject of European economic policy, linked to the ability of the internal market to preserve effective competition in sectors dominated by foreign companies with considerable technological and financial lead.
This concern is particularly visible in Germany, where the tradition of Ordoliberalismus has historically placed particular emphasis on maintaining a balanced competitive structure. Several German politicians and economists pointed out that the power of digital platforms could lead to an excessive concentration of economic and information power. This sensitivity helps to explain why Germany is becoming one of the most active Member States in the European debate on the regulation of large platforms.[24]
France is also adopting a progressively more critical position, notably through the work of several public institutions devoted to the digital economy. The question is not only that of the individual behaviour of a company, but that of the ability of European companies to develop in an environment where certain players control essential infrastructures for access to markets. This reflection is more broadly in line with French questions about digital sovereignty, even if this notion would not take on its full political dimension until several years later.
At the same time, some national competition authorities are starting to examine the specificities of digital markets. The German Bundeskartellamt, the French Competition Authority and the British authorities are gradually taking an interest in the effects of platforms, even if most cases were still exploratory in the early 2010s. This period saw the emergence of an initial institutional tension: while the national authorities identified certain difficulties, the main competence in matters of abuse of a dominant position at the European level remained in the hands of the European Commission.[25]
This situation explains the growing importance of the debate within the European Competition Network (ECN), which was set up in 2004 to organise cooperation between the Commission and national authorities. Digital platforms are gradually becoming a field that reveals the strengths but also the limits of this system: the digital economy is rapidly going beyond national borders, while institutional responses are still largely built around a territorial logic.
3. The European Commission and the Google case: investigations, hesitations and the search for an appropriate response (2010-2014). However, it is the European Commission that remains the central player in this period. In 2010, following several complaints lodged by competing companies, the Commission opened a formal investigation into certain practices of Google concerning, in particular, the display of search results and relations with competing specialised services.[26]
This inquiry is a key moment as it marks the first major institutional attempt to apply Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to a major digital platform. The difficulty is considerable: it is not simply a question of demonstrating that an undertaking holds a dominant position, but of establishing that this position is used in a way that is likely to restrict competition.
The Commission must then answer several complex questions: does the general search engine constitute an autonomous relevant market? Can algorithmic ranking of results be analyzed as a business behavior comparable to a traditional practice of favoritism? Does the promotion of Google-owned services to the detriment of competing services constitute an abuse of foreclosure or the legitimate expression of an integrated innovation?
These questions partly explain the Commission’s initial caution. Under the responsibility of Commissioner Joaquín Almunia, who was in charge of competition between 2010 and 2014, the institution initially favoured an approach based on the search for commitments rather than the rapid adoption of a prohibition decision. This method corresponds to a long-standing practice of European competition law, consisting of obtaining changes in behaviour more quickly than a full litigation procedure.[27]
Between 2013 and 2014, several proposed commitments were discussed between the Commission and Google. In particular, they provided for better visibility of competing services in the search engine’s results pages. However, these proposals have been the subject of significant criticism from some competitors, several European parliamentarians and some legal experts, who considered that they do not sufficiently address the structural challenges linked to Google‘s market power.[28]
The debate then goes beyond the sole technical question of referencing. It concerns a fundamental question: can a company that has built its power through an integrated ecosystem be effectively disciplined by simple behavioural commitments, or should more structural measures be considered to restore the contestability of markets in the long term?
This question already heralds the gradual shift in European competition policy. The Google case reveals the limits of a traditional approach based on ex post intervention after an abuse has been demonstrated. In markets characterized by strong network effects, rapid data accumulation, and the ability to expand into neighboring industries, the time required for a procedure can become an additional advantage for the dominant firm.
Thus, on the eve of the change of the European Commission in 2014 and the arrival of Margrethe Vestager in the competition portfolio, the Google case already illustrates a fundamental tension: the European institutions have gradually identified the difficulties posed by digital platforms, but their legal instruments and their pace of intervention still appear to be insufficiently adapted to the speed of transformation of these markets.
The first warnings against some of Google‘s practices reveal a growing gap between the speed of transformation of the digital economy and the pace of adaptation of European competition instruments. At the beginning of the 2010s, the European Commission now had a sufficiently documented file to intervene, but it was still faced with a fundamental difficulty: how to effectively apply a law designed for traditional markets to platforms whose power is based on data, network effects and the integration of ecosystems?
The Google affair thus becomes a revelation of the limits not only practical, but also conceptual of the European approach to the abuse of a dominant position.
C. The reasons for a late European reaction: the limits of Article 102 TFEU in relation to digital platforms and institutional hesitations (2000-2014)
The history of the relationship between the European Union and Google cannot be reduced to a simple question of political will or speed of administrative intervention. The relative slowness of the European reaction is the result of a set of legal, economic and institutional factors that explain the difficulties encountered by competition authorities when confronted with large digital platforms.
Article 102 TFEU has been a powerful instrument for sanctioning abuses of a dominant position for several decades. It has enabled the European Commission to develop important case law in sectors as varied as energy, telecommunications, transport and the pharmaceutical industry. However, its application to digital markets raises particular difficulties: the definition of relevant markets becomes more complex, the notion of market power must incorporate non-price factors, and anti-competitive effects can appear gradually, sometimes several years after the implementation of a practice.
This difficulty was all the greater because the digital economy had a double characteristic in the early 2010s. On the one hand, the services offered by the large platforms produced immediate and difficult to dispute benefits for consumers. On the other hand, the mechanisms likely to limit competition were often indirect: accumulation of data, lock-in effects, control of interfaces or dependence of user companies.
The period preceding the major decisions against Google is therefore a moment of intellectual transition. It sees two opposing approaches. The first considers that digital markets must be analysed using the classic tools of competition, mainly looking for demonstrable effects on prices and consumer welfare. The second believes that some platforms, because of their position as essential intermediaries, require a more structural approach that takes into account their ability to organise the very conditions of access to markets.
It is in this tension that the evolution of European doctrine is gradually taking place. The analyses devoted to Article 102 TFEU show that, while the prohibition of abuses of a dominant position makes it possible to penalise established anticompetitive conduct, its effectiveness necessarily depends on the ability of the authorities to identify at an early stage the mechanisms by which a dominant position can be consolidated.[29]
1. Article 102 TFEU: a powerful instrument but difficult to adapt to the characteristics of digital markets. The history of European competition law shows that Article 102 TFEU is not an ineffective instrument. Since the beginning of the Community construction, it has enabled the European Commission and the Courts of the Union to sanction the very diverse conduct of companies with a particular economic power: refusal of access, exclusionary practices, discrimination, tying or abusive exploitation of economic dependence.[30]
However, digital markets will gradually reveal the practical limits of this instrument when applied to platforms whose economic power is based less on the control of a particular product than on the control of a complex ecosystem.
In traditional abuse of dominance cases, the competitive analysis is generally based on a relatively identifiable sequence: definition of the relevant market (extremely difficult operationally for complex ecosystems), establishment of the reality of the dominant position, identification of abusive behaviour and demonstration of anti-competitive effects. This method remains fully applicable to digital markets, but it faces particular challenges when the dominant firm provides a free service, operates in a fast-paced innovation environment and operates simultaneously in several interdependent markets.
The first obstacle thus concerns the definition of the relevant market. In the case of Google, the key question is not only whether the general search market is an autonomous market, but also how to understand the interactions between search, advertising, data, specialized services and technical infrastructure. The economic logic of platforms goes beyond the traditional boundaries between sectors of activity.[31]
The second obstacle relates to the measurement of economic power. In traditional markets, market share is a central indicator. In the digital economy, it remains important but insufficient. The power of a platform also depends on factors that are more difficult to quantify: the volume of data collected, the quality of the algorithms, the ability to learn, the reputation, the costs of change for users or ecosystem effects.[32]
Finally, the third obstacle lies in the temporality of competitive control. Proceedings under Article 102 TFEU necessarily take place after the emergence of conduct capable of being classified as abusive. However, in digital markets, competitive advantage can become self-reinforcing: the more users and data a platform gathers, the better it is in its services, attracting more users and further strengthening its position.
This cumulative dynamic poses a particular difficulty for competition authorities: when the intervention takes place after several years of consolidation of an ecosystem, the simple financial sanction or behavioural injunction may not be enough to restore effective competition.
It is precisely this difficulty that the Google affair will gradually bring to light. The question is no longer just whether a dominant undertaking has infringed Article 102 TFEU, but whether the traditional instruments of competition law still make it possible to operate effectively in markets characterised by massive network effects and exceptional speed of expansion.
2. Doctrinal and economic debates: between the neoclassical approach, the Chicago School and the consideration of new forms of digital power. This difficulty of adaptation is not only the responsibility of the European institutions. It also corresponds to a profound change in the economic debates on competition.
From the 1980s onwards, the growing influence of the Chicago School led a significant part of American and European antitrust doctrine to favour an analysis that focused more on economic efficiency, consumer welfare and demonstrable effects on prices. This approach has helped to modernise competition law by limiting certain reasoning based solely on the size of companies or on the protection of competitors. But it has also sometimes inhibited the conditions for the implementation of this right in the face of flagrant abuses and, in terms of digital markets, it has considerably delayed actions.
This development has also influenced the European application of Article 102 TFEU. The European Commission itself has gradually adopted a more economic approach, notably through its 2009 guidance document on exclusionary practices by dominant companies.[33] It is true that this development had important advantages: in the real economy, it made it possible to avoid excessive protection of less efficient competitors and to better distinguish genuinely anti-competitive behaviour from normal innovation and competition strategies. However, it raised questions when the characteristics of digital markets began to become clear.
Indeed, in an environment characterised by network effects, considerable economies of scale and massive data accumulation, an economically rational strategy for a dominant company can also contribute to strengthening barriers to entry in the long term and prohibiting the entry of new innovative operators. The debate then shifted: it was no longer just a question of seeking immediate harm to the consumer, but of assessing the ability of a platform to permanently change the very structure of the market.
The work of several economists and jurists has gradually contributed to renewing this analysis. Research on multi-sided markets, digital platforms and the competitive value of data has shown that traditional criteria of economic power need to be complemented by an analysis of the ecosystems and dependencies created around platforms.[34]
This doctrinal evolution partly explains the gradual change in the way Google is viewed. What was initially considered the exceptional success of an innovative company is beginning to be analysed as the possible constitution of a private infrastructure essential to the functioning of several digital markets.
3. The European Commission between legal prudence and institutional slowness: the Google affair (2000-2014) as revealing a gap between the time of law and the digital time. An examination of the period 2000-2014 leads to a nuanced conclusion. It would be historically inaccurate to assert that the European Commission ignored the transformations brought about by digital platforms or that it remained completely passive in the face of Google‘s practices. Since the end of the 2000s, the European institution has had a great deal of information on the concerns expressed by certain economic operators and has gradually begun an in-depth analysis of the company’s practices.
However, the chronology of that intervention reveals a growing gap between the speed of Google‘s expansion and the necessarily slower pace of a procedure based on Article 102 TFEU. Several years may pass between the emergence of the first competition concerns, the opening of a formal investigation, the economic review of practices and the prospect of a possible decision. Meanwhile, the dominant company continues to grow its audience, improve its technologies, and expand its ecosystem.
This tension between economic and administrative time is one of the major difficulties in the control of digital platforms. In a traditional industrial sector, a multi-year procedure can take place in a relatively stable environment. In the digital economy, it can operate in a market that has been profoundly transformed, even though the company concerned has in the meantime strengthened its competitive position.
The Google case particularly illustrates this difficulty. After the initiation of the investigation in 2010, the Commission initially chose an undertaking-based approach. This approach corresponds to a usual practice of European competition law: to obtain a rapid change in behaviour rather than to engage in a long litigation procedure whose outcome remains uncertain.[35]
Under the responsibility of Commissioner Joaquín Almunia, the Commission has tried several times to reach an agreement with Google. However, this approach is attracting growing criticism, especially among the company’s competitors and some members of the European Parliament. They considered that behavioural commitments do not fully address a more structural problem: that of a dominant player controlling an essential infrastructure for visibility and access to digital markets.[36]
The central difficulty then lies in the choice of remedy. A classic sanction requires precise demonstration of an abuse and its anti-competitive effects. Structural intervention, on the other hand, implies the recognition that certain economic configurations can produce long-term competitive risks even before their negative effects are fully observable.
This hesitation is not unique to the European Union. It also runs through the U.S. debates over the application of antitrust law to big tech companies. In the 2000s and early 2010s, the American authorities themselves remained cautious with regard to large platforms, largely favouring an analysis based on innovation, economic efficiency and benefits for consumers.[37]
However, the European case has a particularity. The European Union does not have digital players comparable to the large American or Chinese companies, which gives competition policy an additional economic and strategic dimension. The Google issue is gradually going beyond the sole control of individual behaviour: it is becoming a revelation of Europe’s ability to preserve an open market in an environment dominated by companies with considerable technological, financial and geopolitical power.
It was also during this period that the first awareness of the need to adapt European instruments became apparent. The debates surrounding Googleare gradually heralding a paradigm shift: when certain platforms reach such a size and centrality that ex-post sanctions may come too late, it becomes necessary to consider ex ante obligations to regulate their behaviour before the imbalances become irreversible.[38]
This intellectual and institutional evolution will directly prepare the transition to a new phase of European competition policy, marked from 2014 onwards by a spectacular acceleration of proceedings against Google, and then by the development of an entirely new framework with the DMA.[39]
Thus, the period 2000-2014 corresponds neither to a total absence of European action, nor to a victory of traditional competition law. Rather, it is an institutional learning phase in which the EU gradually discovers that the instruments designed for traditional markets need to be complemented by regulation adapted to the specific characteristics of digital platforms.
The first phase of the relationship between Google and the European Union therefore reveals a fundamental tension. The company’s power has been built in an environment where innovation, free services and immediate benefits for users have long dominated economic analysis. When the first competition concerns arise, the European institutions must apply tools designed for markets whose characteristics differ profoundly from those of digital platforms.
The next period will be one of the transition from awareness to action: the European Commission will gradually abandon the search for a simple behavioral compromise to adopt a much more offensive policy, based on several major sanction decisions against Google. This development will be a major test for the real effectiveness of European competition law in the face of new digital powers.
II. From investigation to sanction: the European tug-of-war with Google and the limits of ex post competition law (2014-2023)
The year 2014 was a turning point in the relationship between Google and the European Union. After several years of preliminary investigation, informal discussions and attempts at a negotiated settlement, the European Commission is entering a new phase: that of the gradual assertion of the power to sanction a digital platform that has become one of the most powerful economic players in the world.
This development is not the result of a sudden change in the perception of the American company. Rather, as already remarked, it reflects the accumulation of concerns that have emerged over the past few years, as Google‘s business model has expanded beyond the simple search engine to form a veritable ecosystem combining – based on a bulimia of mergers and acquisitions – online search, digital advertising, specialized services, mobile operating systems and massive data collection.
The European Commission will then mobilise the classic instrument of EU competition law, Article 102 TFEU on abuse of dominant position, to try to respond to practices whose very nature raises new questions. The challenge is no longer just to identify a dominant company, but to determine how an operator controlling critical digital infrastructure can use this position to strengthen its power in neighbouring markets.
The period 2014-2023 is thus an exceptional phase of legal experimentation. The decisions adopted against Google Search Shopping, Google Android and Google AdSense represent several billion euros in penalties and demonstrate a new European desire to uphold competition principles in the digital economy. They also constitute a laboratory of the limits of ex post law: despite their symbolic and financial importance, these decisions raise the question of their real capacity to change the behaviour of an operator benefiting from considerable network effects in the long term.
The analysis of this period therefore reveals a double reality. On the one hand, the European Commission demonstrates that existing instruments can be mobilised against large platforms and that no company, regardless of its economic power, is legally out of reach. On the other hand, the length of the proceedings, the judicial debates and the difficulties in implementing remedies gradually show the need for a change of approach, which will lead a few years later to the adoption of a specific ex ante regulation with the Digital Markets Act.
This second part will be devoted to this period of direct confrontation between the European Union and Google. It will successively examine the first major case of self-preference with Google Search Shopping, then the extension of litigation to ecosystem logics with Google Android and Google AdSense, before analysing the real scope of the penalties imposed and the reasons that will lead the European Union to gradually go beyond the traditional framework of Article 102 TFEU.
A. Google Search Shopping: the first major European confrontation with a dominant platform and the progressive recognition of the power of self-preference (2014-2024)
The Google Search Shopping case occupies a founding place in the contemporary history of European digital competition law. It is the first major decision by which the European Commission sanctions a large platform for having used its main activity to promote a service developed in a neighbouring market.
Beyond the price comparison sector alone, the case raises a question that is set to become central to the global regulation of platforms: can a company that controls an essential digital infrastructure for user access use this position to privilege its own services and thus modify the conditions of competition ?
This question also marks an important evolution in the analysis of digital economic power. Dominance no longer necessarily results from a classic practice of exclusion, such as a refusal to supply or a predatory pricing strategy. It can also result from the control of an interface, an algorithm or a ranking mechanism that determines the visibility of the economic actors present on a market.
The case thus reveals a fundamental difficulty in contemporary competition law: when a platform organises users’ access to a set of competing services, its power lies not only in the holding of a high market share, but in its ability to determine the conditions of access to the digital economy itself.[40]
1. From the competitors’ complaint to the European Commission’s landmark decision (2010-2017). The origin of the case can be traced back to several complaints lodged with the European Commission by companies alleging that Google‘s general search engine was systematically favouring its own specialised services to the detriment of competitors. The first complainants include Foundem, a British price comparison engine, as well as several players in the e-commerce, travel and online services sectors.[41]
These complaints come in a context where the economic role of Google‘s search engine has changed profoundly. Originally designed as a neutral tool for accessing information, it has gradually become an essential infrastructure for many companies seeking to reach consumers. For these players, visibility in search results is no longer a simple commercial advantage, but an essential condition for market access.
The European Commission officially opened an investigation in November 2010.[42] The investigations concern several practices that may reveal an abuse of Google‘s dominant position on the general online search market. The case finally focuses on a particular issue: Google‘s treatment of its own comparison shopping service, initially called Google Product Search and then Google Shopping.
According to the Commission, Google applied a twofold logic: on the one hand, to favour its own service by granting it privileged visibility in the results pages; on the other hand, to apply less favourable ranking criteria to competing services, leading to an artificial reduction in their visibility.[43]
The legal difficulty was considerable. The conduct complained of did not consist in an explicit prohibition on competitors from accessing the market, but in the use of an essential visibility tool to promote internal activity. The Commission therefore had to demonstrate that a dominant undertaking could abuse its power not by closing access to an infrastructure, but by exploiting the control it exercised over its operation.
The decision adopted on 27 June 2017 marks a historic moment in this respect. The Commission fines Google €2.42 billion, finding that the company abused its dominant position in the general online search market by granting an illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service.[44]
The scope of this decision goes far beyond the amount of the penalty. For the first time, the European Union clearly states that a dominant digital platform cannot use the control of an intermediation infrastructure to promote its own activities to the detriment of competitors who depend on this infrastructure for access to users.
2. Self-preference: a new category of abuse between innovation, vertical integration and control of market access. The Google Search Shoppingcase is of particular importance because it leads the European institutions to confront a question that is still largely unheard of in competition law: under what conditions can the conduct of a dominant undertaking that favours its own services constitute an abuse when it does not explicitly refuse access to its competitors?
Traditionally, European competition law has dealt with exclusionary behaviour through relatively identified categories: refusal to supply, margin squeeze, tied selling, loyalty rebates or predatory practices. In such cases, the dominant undertaking generally adopts identifiable conduct aimed at preventing or limiting the action of its competitors.[45]
The situation with Google is different. The general search engine remains accessible to users and competing services are not formally excluded. The difficulty lies in the fact that Google simultaneously controls the access infrastructure and a competing service in a neighbouring market. The question put to the Commission is therefore that of a possible conflict between two functions: that of intermediary organising access to the market and that of economic operator itself participating in competition on that market.
This configuration was not totally unknown to European law. Similar problems had already been encountered in some network sectors, in particular where vertically integrated companies controlled critical infrastructure while operating in downstream markets. However, the digital environment introduces a new dimension: the power of intermediation is not based on a physical infrastructure that is difficult to duplicate, but on a set of technical mechanisms — algorithms, data, relevance signals and network effects — that determine the economic visibility of the actors.[46]
The Commission therefore considers that Google‘s dominant position on general online search confers on it a particular responsibility. According to his analysis, the company does not behave like a simple competitor among others when it ranks search results, because its engine is the main channel for users to access information and digital services. The use of that advantage to favour Google Shopping to the detriment of competing services would therefore be liable to distort competition on a neighbouring market.[47]
This approach has given rise to an important doctrinal debate. Its defenders have pointed out that it allows for a new economic reality to be taken into account: a dominant platform can wield considerable power without imposing high prices or directly limiting access to its core service. Its influence lies in its ability to organize the competitive environment around it.[48]
His critics, on the contrary, have stressed the risk of an excessive extension of competition law. According to this analysis, forcing an integrated firm to treat its own services exactly like those of its competitors could weaken incentives to invest and innovate. A search engine is precisely a product whose value is based on the ability to continuously improve the relevance of results; Imposing too strong constraints on its algorithmic functioning could lead to excessive intervention in the legitimate economic choices of an innovative company.[49]
The controversy surrounding Google Shopping is thus part of a broader debate that has been going on for several years in digital competition law: should we favour an approach focused on demonstrable effects on consumers or recognise that certain market structures may justify preventive intervention when economic concentration reaches a level likely to limit contestability in the long term?
The European response will evolve gradually. The Google Shopping decision does not yet create a standalone category of abuse called « self-preference. » It falls within the traditional framework of Article 102 TFEU. However, it contributes to the emergence of a new analytical framework, which will then be taken up and institutionalised by the DMA regulation. The prohibition on gatekeepers favouring their own services on their platforms will thus become one of the pillars of the new European Digital Markets Act.[50]
3. Judicial review: confirmation of the Commission’s decision but clarification of the evidentiary requirements. However, the European Commission’s decision of 2017 could not remain unchallenged. Google brought an action before the General Court of the European Union, challenging in particular the Commission’s legal analysis, the definition of the relevant market and the demonstration of the link between the alleged practices and the anticompetitive effects.
Litigation thus illustrates a classic tension in European competition law: to what extent should the courts control the complex economic assessment carried out by the Commission? This issue is particularly sensitive in digital business, where the economic effects are difficult to isolate and where the contested behaviours can also correspond to innovation strategies.
In its judgment of 10 November 2021, the General Court of the European Union essentially upheld the Commission’s decision and validated the existence of an abuse of a dominant position.[51] In particular, it acknowledges that Google‘s situation has particular characteristics: its search engine occupies an exceptional position of intermediation and its conduct consisted not simply in improving its own service, but in altering the conditions of competition by giving it an advantage that its competitors could not reproduce.
The Court nevertheless makes an important nuance. It does not consider that any self-preference practised by a dominant undertaking automatically constitutes an abuse. It emphasises the need to examine the specific circumstances of each case, in particular the particular role played by the controlled infrastructure and the actual or potential effects of the conduct on competition.[52]
This jurisdictional prudence is important. It prevents the Google Shopping case from being interpreted as establishing a general obligation of neutrality for dominant platforms. European law does not condemn the simple fact that an integrated company develops its own services; It sanctions the use of market power to distort the conditions of access to a neighbouring market.
The Court of Justice of the European Union will confirm this approach in 2024 by essentially dismissing the appeal brought by Google and Alphabet.[53] This confirmation considerably reinforces the scope of the judgment: it validates the idea that a dominant platform can incur competitive liability when it uses its role as an intermediary to promote its own activities.
The Google Shopping case is therefore a decisive step in the evolution of European law. It demonstrates both the adaptability of Article 102 TFEU and its limitations. The Commission and the European courts have succeeded in apprehending new behaviour by using existing categories, but at the cost of a procedure of more than ten years, in the face of market operators where nano seconds can be worth hundreds of thousands of euros. This exceptional duration will help convince the European institutions that an exclusively ex post intervention is no longer sufficient in the face of the large digital platforms.
B. Google Android and Google AdSense: the progressive demonstration of an ecosystem and digital integration strategy (2015-2023)
After the Google Search Shopping case, the European Commission is gradually broadening its analysis. The problem is no longer just one of preferential treatment given to a service owned by a dominant undertaking. It becomes that of a platform’s ability to use a set of products, contracts and technical dependencies to strengthen its position in several interdependent markets.
This evolution corresponds to a key feature of the digital economy: large platforms do not necessarily dominate a single market, but build ecosystems in which several services reinforce each other. The search engine, the mobile operating system, the application store, mapping services, online advertising and data collection tools thus form an integrated economic whole whose coherence can become a major source of competitive power.
The Google Android affair is a new major moment in this respect. It obliges the Commission to examine how a dominant player can use control of a widely distributed software infrastructure to guide the behaviour of manufacturers, developers and users. The Google AdSense case will extend this analysis to the field of digital advertising, the economic heart of Google’s model, by highlighting the issue of the control of advertising intermediaries.
These two decisions thus illustrate an important evolution in European competition law: the analysis no longer concerns only a one-off act likely to produce an anticompetitive effect, but a global economic architecture allowing a dominant company to preserve and extend its power.
1. Google Android: the control of the mobile ecosystem as a new form of abuse of dominant position. The Google Android affair occupies a special place in the European saga because it concerns one of the most strategic sectors of the contemporary digital economy: that of mobile operating systems.
From the end of the 2000s, the rapid development of smartphones profoundly transformed access to digital services. The operating system becomes an essential infrastructure, comparable to what the computer operating system on a personal computer had previously represented. Whoever controls this technical layer has a significant ability to influence the entire downstream application environment.
Google‘s acquisition of Android in 2005 was a major strategic step. Unlike the closed models developed by some competitors, notably Apple with iOS, Google chooses to offer an operating system that is largely open to device manufacturers. This strategy contributed to the rapid success of Android, which gradually became the world’s leading mobile operating system.
However, this apparent openness is also based on a set of contractual agreements with smartphone manufacturers wishing to access Google‘s applications and services. It is precisely these agreements that the European Commission’s investigation opened in 2015 is about.[54]
In particular, the Commission is examining three main practices: the obligations imposed on manufacturers wishing to pre-install the Google Play Store, the mandatory installation of certain Google applications such as the search engine or the Chrome browser, as well as the contractual restrictions preventing manufacturers from developing alternative versions of Android.
The Commission’s economic reasoning is based on a central idea: even if Android is presented as an open system, access to Google‘s complete ecosystem is such a significant advantage for manufacturers that it creates economic and technical dependence. The agreements reached thus enabled Google to strengthen the dominant position of its mobile search engine and to limit the development of competing solutions.
The decision of 18 July 2018 marks a new major step. The Commission has fined Google €4.34 billion, the highest penalty ever imposed by the European Union in a competition case to date.[55]
The Commission considers that Google has used Android‘s dominant position to consolidate the dominance of its search engine on mobile devices and reduce the development possibilities of other competing search engines or operating systems.
The originality of the case lies in the fact that the abuse does not lie in isolated conduct, but in a coherent contractual whole. The Commission does not simply sanction a particular clause; it analyzes the way in which several contractual mechanisms combine to produce a lock-in effect around the Google ecosystem.[56]
This approach reflects an important evolution. Digital power is manifested not only in the possession of a dominant technology, but in the ability to organize economic relations around this technology and to progressively make access to an integrated set of services indispensable. This aspect is present in almost all cases in the digital economy, where large amounts of data are in some way the fuel.
2. Judicial review of the Android case : confirmation of the European approach but partial reduction of the fine. As in the Google Shoppingcase, the Commission’s decision is immediately appealed to the General Court of the European Union. In particular, Google disputes the Commission’s economic analysis, considering that it does not take sufficient account of the competition exercised by Apple and the open nature of Android.
In its judgment of 14 September 2022, the General Court essentially confirms the Commission’s analysis.[57] It acknowledges that Google‘s contractual practices have contributed to strengthening the dominant position of its search engine on mobile devices and to limiting the possibilities available to competitors.
However, the General Court made an important nuance concerning the analysis of certain anticompetitive effects and slightly reduced the amount of the fine from €4.34 billion to around €4.125 billion.[58]
This decision confirms a trend already observed in the Google Shopping case : the European courts largely validate the Commission’s ability to apprehend the new behaviour of platforms, while recalling the need for a rigorous economic demonstration.
The Android case is also of particular importance for the future of European digital law. Several types of conduct penalised under Article 102 TFEU correspond precisely to the obligations that will subsequently be incorporated into the DMA. The prohibition on gatekeepers favouring their own services, imposing certain applications or limiting interoperability thus has its origin in part in that earlier case-law.
The transition to an ex ante regime then gradually appears to be the logical consequence of an observation: when the authorities have to wait several years to demonstrate that a closed ecosystem produces anticompetitive effects, the market may have already changed profoundly.
3. Google AdSense: digital advertising, the economic heart of Google’s model, at the centre of the last major litigation under Article 102 TFEU. The Google AdSense case completes the analysis undertaken with Google Search Shopping and Google Android by shifting the European Commission’s attention to the sector that constitutes the economic foundation of Google‘s power : digital advertising.
Since its creation, Google‘s business model has been largely based on the ability to offer services free of charge to users while enhancing the audience thus built up with advertisers. Online search, mobile services or apps are not just standalone activities; They are part of a larger system in which the data collected and the attention of users make it possible to develop an extremely profitable advertising business.
This feature profoundly distinguishes large digital platforms from traditional businesses. Economic power does not lie solely in the direct sale of a product or service, but in the ability to control an intermediation infrastructure linking several categories of actors: users, advertisers and content publishers.
Google’s advertising activity has thus developed around several complementary services. The search engine enables advertising related to Internet users’ queries with Google Ads, while the AdSense network allows website publishers to display ads provided by Google on their own digital spaces. This position as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers is gradually becoming a central element of the European digital economy.[59]
The European Commission opened a formal investigation into Google AdSense in 2016, after several complaints about contractual practices imposed on publishers of sites using the company’s advertising services.[60]
The Commission’s analysis focuses on exclusivity or quasi-exclusivity clauses in certain contracts with publishers. According to the applicant, Google used its dominant position on the market for advertising intermediation linked to online searches to prevent its competitors from placing their own ads on partner sites.
The legal issue is then similar to that encountered in Google Android, but applied to another part of the ecosystem. It is no longer a question of imposing a behavior on smartphone manufacturers, but of controlling the conditions of access of competing advertising players to a network of publishers already structured around Google.
The Commission considers that these practices have contributed to limiting the ability of competitors, in particular alternative advertising platforms, to develop a credible offer on the European market. By using its contractual power with publishers, Google would have strengthened an already important dominant position in a sector where network effects play a decisive role.
The decision adopted on 20 March 2019 led the Commission to impose a fine of €1.49 billion on Google.[61] This penalty is lower than those imposed in the Shopping and Android cases, but its economic importance is considerable as it directly affects the financing mechanism of the digital economy.
The case is also of particular interest because it reveals an additional dimension of the power of platforms: the simultaneous control of several levels of the same market. Google acts as a user service provider, technical intermediary, advertising player and operator of a monetization infrastructure. This vertical integration is one of the key elements explaining the difficulty of applying traditional competition law instruments.
The Commission does not, of course, question the principle of economic integration that allows for efficiency gains. An innovative company must be able to develop several complementary services and exploit the synergies resulting from its investments. The question of competition arises when such integration enables a dominant undertaking to transform an advantage acquired on one market into a lasting mechanism for protection against competition in neighbouring markets.[62]
4. The results of the three cases: a progressive demonstration of the limits of ex post intervention. With the Google Search Shopping, Google Android and Google AdSense decisions, the European Commission has imposed cumulative penalties on Google in excess of €8 billion. These decisions are one of the largest antitrust actions ever brought against a global technology company.[63]
Firstly, they demonstrate the ability of European competition law to evolve. Contrary to some critics who believe that traditional rules are totally unsuitable for digital platforms, European experience shows that Article 102 TFEU remains an instrument for dealing with complex behaviour.
However, this legal success must be analysed with caution. The proceedings against Google also illustrate the structural limits of exclusively ex post control. Several years may pass between the opening of the first investigations, the Commission’s decisions, the judicial appeals and their final confirmation. During this period, the economic position of the dominant undertaking may continue to evolve and the markets concerned may undergo profound changes.
This temporality is particularly problematic in the digital economy. Platforms often benefit from cumulative effects: each new user, each new data collected and each new partner integrated potentially strengthens their competitive advantage. A sanction occurring several years after the implementation of a practice may therefore have a more restorative than truly transformative scope.
The Google experiment is thus gradually leading the European institutions to a major conclusion: competition law remains necessary, but it is no longer sufficient on its own to regulate the major digital platforms. When certain actors reach the position of gatekeepers, the prevention of certain behaviors becomes as important as their sanction.
It is precisely this intellectual evolution that will lead the European Union to develop a new instrument, complementary to traditional competition law: the Digital Markets Act. The DMA no longer only seeks to demonstrate that a particular behaviour is abusive; it is a text of a sectoral regulatory nature that imposes obligations directly applicable upstream on platforms considered to be structurally unavoidable.
This evolution towards ex ante regulation was not, however, solely the product of an administrative reflection conducted by the European Commission on the limits of its own instruments. It was the result of a gradual convergence between several economic, political and legal observations. From the beginning of the 2010s, many competing companies or market partners, both European and American, drew the attention of public authorities to the risks associated with the increasing concentration of economic power in the hands of large digital platforms. Their concern was not about the technological success of these companies or about the efficiency gains that could result from network effects, but about the risk that an operator controlling a critical infrastructure for access to users could gradually transform an initial competitive advantage into a sustainable foreclosure capability. From this perspective, the problem posed by Google went beyond the mere examination of individual behavior: it concerned the very preservation of the contestability of digital markets and the possibility for new innovative players to emerge in the face of ecosystems that had become difficult to circumvent.[64]
This economic concern gradually found a political relay within the European institutions, in particular in the European Parliament. As early as the early 2010s, several MEPs expressed their concern about the discrepancy between the speed of expansion of the large digital platforms and the necessarily long time frame of procedures based on Article 102 TFEU. The Google case thus became emblematic of a more general question: could the traditional instruments of competition law, designed to sanction abusive behaviour ex post, really preserve effective competition in markets characterised by network effects, massive accumulation of data and a strong concentration dynamic?
The European Parliament’s resolution of 27 November 2014 on supporting the competitiveness of the digital internal market is a particularly revealing moment in this development. Even before the 2017 Google Shopping decision, Parliament was already calling for a structural reflection on the conditions of competition in online search and on the limits of an exclusively corrective approach.[65] This parliamentary mobilisation helped to change the European debate: the question was no longer just about the sanction of a possible abuse of a dominant position, but about the need to prevent the emergence of situations of lasting economic dependence on platforms that had become essential infrastructures of the digital economy.
The parliamentary chronology presented in Table 2 below reveals a significant evolution: initially focused on the construction of the digital single market, the European Parliament’s thinking has gradually shifted to the problems of market power, concentration and regulation of the large platforms. This succession of texts makes it possible to qualify the idea that the DMA is exclusively the result of an administrative initiative by the Commission. Since 2014, the European Parliament has been an important forum for raising concerns about the power of search engines and, from 2016-2017, digital platforms. The 2014 resolution is particularly revealing: it comes before the 2017 Google Shopping decision and already reflects a concern about the ability of traditional tools to preserve satisfactory competitive conditions in online search. The 2017 Platforms Report then marks a shift from a Google-centric concern to a more general reflection on the structure of digital markets.
Table 2: THE MAIN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTIONS ON GOOGLE AND DIGITAL PLATFORMS
| Date | Text | Main contribution |
| November 27, 2014 | European Parliament resolution on supporting the competitiveness of the digital internal market, P8_TA(2014)0073 | The first particularly significant parliamentary position on search engines: the Parliament underlines the competitive importance of the online search market and calls for the effective application of the competition rules; It also envisages the separation of search engines and other commercial services. |
| 19 January 2016 | Resolution on » Towards a Digital Single Market Act« | Parliament calls for a deepening of the regulatory framework for the digital market and for better consideration of the economic transformations brought about by platforms. |
| February 16, 2017 | Resolution on the European Cloud Initiative | Highlighting the challenges related to data, digital infrastructure, interoperability and European competitiveness. |
| June 15, 2017 | Resolution on online platforms and the Digital Single Market, P8_TA(2017)0272, on the basis of the report A8-0204/2017 | Major step: Parliament explicitly identifies platforms as creating new public policy and regulatory challenges; It insists on transparency, fair access, non-discrimination, interoperability and the risks associated with the dominance of certain platforms. |
| September 19, 2018 | Resolution on the application of competition law to the digital economy | Strengthening of the reflection on the adaptation of competition rules to digital economic models and network effects. |
| October 20, 2020 | Resolutions on the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act | The Parliament supports the idea of a specific ex-ante framework for the large platforms and contributes to changing the thinking from a simple application of existing law to a regulation of systemic actors. |
| December 15, 2021 | Parliament’s position on the Digital Markets Act | Consolidation of the ex-ante approach : specific obligations for large platforms, strengthening interoperability, limitation of certain practices of self-preference and data combination. |
| September 14, 2022 | Final adoption of the digital legislative package | Parliament is involved in the completion of the legislative process that leads to the entry into force of the DMA and its application to gatekeepers from 2024. |
The process leading to the Digital Markets Act thus appears to be the result of a convergence between several dynamics: the lessons learned from the major antitrust cases against Google, the economic analyses highlighting the specificities of digital markets, the warnings expressed by companies confronted with the power of platforms and the growing political pressure exerted by the European Parliament. The Commission itself, faced with the practical limits of Article 102 TFEU, ended up considering that a complementary instrument was necessary in order to intervene more quickly and more structurally.
This genesis explains the particular nature of the DMA, which we will return to in later developments. Unlike European competition law, which is based on Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and is based on the identification of anticompetitive behaviour, the DMA is based on a different logic: that of sectoral economic regulation. It does not first seek to establish that a company has committed an offence in a given situation; It imposes preventive obligations on certain categories of operators whose economic position gives them an exceptional capacity to influence the functioning of the markets.
This approach is in line with European regulations developed in other sectors characterised by the existence of essential infrastructures or key operators, in particular telecommunications, energy, rail transport or certain financial services. In these areas, the aim was not only to sanction abuses after they had occurred, but to organise the conditions for an open and balanced market in advance.[66] The DMA transposes this philosophy to the digital economy by considering that certain platforms, designated as gatekeepers, occupy a particular structural position justifying specific obligations.
The history of the relationship between the European Union and Google thus reveals a three-stage evolution. In the first phase, Europe tried to use the classic instruments of competition law to correct behaviour that had emerged in the digital economy. In a second phase, it found that these instruments, even if applied with determination, were not always sufficient to change deeply entrenched structures of economic power. In a third phase, it chooses to complement competition with preventive regulation of systemic players.
The DMA therefore appears less as an abandonment of competition law than as an extension of it by a new legal instrument. It reflects the institutional recognition of a major change: in some digital markets, preserving effective competition now means acting before economic domination produces effects that are difficult to reverse.
III. The Digital Markets Act: the European ambition to take back the initiative in the face of systemic platforms (2022-2026)
The adoption of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector, better known by the aforementioned name or acronym of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), is a major turning point in the history of European competition and economic regulation policy. After almost a decade of long and complex proceedings against Google, but also against other major digital platforms, the European Union recognises that traditional competition law instruments, as indispensable as they are, are not always effective in preserving competitive dynamics in markets characterised by strong network effects, massive data accumulation and rapid concentration of competitors. dominant positions.
The DMA thus marks a methodological break. It is not simply a new antitrust tool to complement Article 102 TFEU. It is based on a different logic, close to that of the European sectoral regulations applied for several decades to network industries. The European legislator considers that some digital operators have acquired an intermediation function such that their behaviour can structurally influence an entire market. Therefore, the objective is no longer only to sanction an abuse found after several years of investigation, but to impose upstream obligations intended to guarantee the openness and contestability of the markets.
However, this development answers a double question. The first concerns the real effectiveness of the new instrument: will an ex ante regulation make it possible to change the behaviour of companies with exceptional technological, financial and legal power? The second is broader and touches on the geopolitical dimension of digital regulation: can the European Union impose its rules on major American companies in the long term, even though the United States is itself experiencing an intense debate on the power of the major platforms, but is still hesitating on the institutional response to be provided, or even openly attacking the European regulation introduced by the DMA ?
Google‘s recent history illustrates a fundamental tension. The European Union has gradually built one of the most ambitious digital regulatory frameworks in the world. But the effectiveness of this ambition will depend less on the sophistication of the texts than on the real capacity of the European institutions to ensure their application in the face of economic actors whose power sometimes exceeds that of certain States.
Part III will analyse this new stage around three complementary axes. It will first examine the institutional and legal genesis of the DMA, the result of a decade of debates on the inadequacy of traditional competition law (A). It will then study its concrete implementation since 2023, in particular in relation to Google, by assessing the first results, the platforms’ adaptation strategies and the difficulties encountered by the Commission (B). Finally, it will place this evolution in its international environment, by comparing the European, American and Chinese trajectories and by questioning the realism of renewed transatlantic cooperation in the face of systemic digital actors (C).
A. The birth of the DMA: from the critique of competition law to the construction of an ex ante regulation of digital platforms
The adoption of the DMA in September 2022 is less a sudden break than an end. It is the result of a gradual evolution of European economic and legal thinking in the face of the profound transformation of digital markets since the early 2000s. The European Union has not suddenly discovered, with the appearance of the major American platforms, a new difficulty for competition. It has gradually noted that certain economic mechanisms specific to digital technology call into question the traditional categories used to analyse market power.
The large digital platforms do not resemble the dominant companies of traditional industrial economies. Their power is not based solely on the possession of a particular technology or on a superior productive capacity. It is the result of a combination of factors: network effects, data accumulation, control of user access interfaces, vertical integration of complementary services and the ability to organize real economic ecosystems around them.
This evolution explains the gradual shift in the European gaze. For a long time, the central issue in competition law was that of the conduct of a dominant company on an identified market. With digital platforms, a different question arises: how can effective competition be preserved when certain operators simultaneously control several interdependent markets and have an exceptional ability to guide the conditions of access to these markets?
The DMA is precisely the institutional response to this question. It does not seek to replace traditional competition law, but to complement it with a preventive regulatory instrument applicable to actors considered systemic. It is based on the idea that certain operators, by reason of their size, their intermediation role and their economic influence, must comply with specific obligations irrespective of the prior demonstration of abuse within the meaning of Article 102 TFEU.
This development marks a major transformation of European economic policy. The centre of gravity is gradually shifting from sanctioning anti-competitive behaviour to the structural organisation of the markets. The DMA thus builds on a longer-standing tradition of regulating grid industries, while adapting it to an economy where critical infrastructure is no longer just physical, but also digital.
1. European awareness: digital platforms as new economic infrastructures. One of the main difficulties faced by European competition law vis-à-vis large digital platforms is that their economic power does not exactly correspond to traditional patterns of domination. In traditional industrial economies, a dominant position generally resulted from the mastery of a scarce resource, a higher production capacity, a technological advance or a significant economic concentration. Digital platforms add a new dimension: their power comes largely from their ability to organize interactions between several categories of users and to exploit the cumulative effects resulting from these interactions.
The services offered by Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta or Microsoft thus have the characteristics of multi-sided markets. A platform does not simply provide a product to an end consumer; It organizes a space for intermediation between different groups of actors whose interests reinforce each other. The number of users attracts more content providers, advertisers or app developers, which in turn improve the platform’s attractiveness to users. This mechanism creates network effects that are likely to encourage rapid concentration around a few dominant players.[67]
In the case of Google, this dynamic is particularly visible. The success of the search engine is based on a combination of volume of use, continuous improvement of algorithms thanks to the data collected and growing attractiveness for advertisers. This cumulative loop partly explains why a company that has acquired a strong position in a digital service can gradually expand this power to neighbouring markets.
However, the phenomenon is not limited to the search engine. Google‘s ecosystem now combines many complementary services: online search, digital advertising, Android mobile operating system, Google Play app store, Chrome browser, map services or cloud computing solutions (the « cloud »). which most GSM phone owners are no longer unaware of). Each of these services can reinforce the others and help create a relationship of economic dependency for both professional and consumer users.
This characteristic leads some economists and public authorities to consider that large digital platforms sometimes function as real economic infrastructures. This classification does not mean that they can be assimilated to traditional natural monopolies, but that they play an intermediation function that has become essential in the organisation of certain markets. Their control of the conditions of access can therefore have consequences that go far beyond their own activity.[68]
This analysis explains the growing importance given to the notion of « gatekeeper ». The competitive problem is no longer just that of a firm exploiting a dominant position to raise prices or reduce production, which is the classic pattern in traditional markets. It also concerns a company capable of imposing the rules of access to an economic environment on which other innovative companies depend.
This development is particularly noticeable for European companies. Many players developing new digital services are confronted with American or Chinese platforms that control the main points of passage to consumers. The question is therefore not only that of competition between large existing companies, but that of the possibility for new competitors to emerge and to challenge the established positions in the long term.[69]
It is precisely this structural dimension that explains why the traditional approach to competition law has gradually seemed insufficient. When economic power is based on cumulative effects and lock-in mechanisms, an intervention only after the perpetration of an abuse may come too late. The European debate has thus gradually shifted: it was no longer just a question of sanctioning the abuses of dominant platforms, but of preserving the general conditions allowing the very existence of dynamic competition.
The gradual recognition of this economic reality obviously does not mean that every digital company with a large market share would necessarily be dominant within the meaning of competition law, nor that any vertical integration would be inherently anticompetitive. Large platforms have often produced major innovations, significantly improved access to digital services and generated significant efficiency gains for consumers and business users.
The issue identified by the European institutions is more precise. It concerns situations in which the advantages initially acquired by innovation and the quality of services can gradually be transformed into structural mechanisms of protection against competition. In these configurations, economic power is no longer the result of the superiority of a product or service alone, but of a company’s ability to control the general conditions of access to a market that has become dependent on its digital infrastructure.
This issue is particularly visible in the relations between platforms and user companies. An app developer dependent on Google Play, a merchant using Amazon Marketplace, a content publisher dependent on the visibility offered by Google Search or an advertiser using Google‘s advertising tools are not necessarily direct competitors of those platforms. However, they are economic actors whose activity may be strongly influenced by the technical, commercial or contractual rules set by the dominant operator.
This situation creates a particular asymmetry. The platform benefits from a very detailed knowledge of the functioning of its own ecosystem, has privileged access to the data generated by user interactions and can sometimes simultaneously act as an intermediary, service provider and competitor of the companies that use its infrastructure. This combination of functions explains some of the concerns expressed for several years by competition authorities and economic players.[70]
The Google Shopping affair is a perfect illustration of this problem. The search engine was not only a service for consumers; It also provided a visibility infrastructure that allowed other companies to access Internet users. The competitive issue therefore did not relate solely to the comparison between two search services, but to the ability of an operator controlling an essential gateway to users to favour its own activities to the detriment of players dependent on that interface.
The same reasoning appears in the Android case. The mobile operating system was not only a technical product offered to smartphone manufacturers. It constituted an architecture around which multiple services, applications and economic relations were developed. The control of this architecture therefore gave Google a capacity for influence that went far beyond the operating system market alone.
This evolution explains why the notion of « ecosystem » now occupies a central place in the economic analysis of platforms. It reflects the idea that a digital company can hold significant power not because it controls a single market in the traditional way, but because it organises a set of interdependent markets in which each position reinforces the others.[71]
This approach is in line with the analyses developed in several preparatory works for the DMA. The report submitted to the European Commission in 2019 by Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer highlighted that some digital markets have characteristics that favour sustainable concentration: significant network effects, data-related economies of scale, high switching costs for users and the ability of large platforms to expand their activity to neighbouring markets.[72]
The European question was therefore no longer just that of the current domination of a company, but that of the dynamic likely to lead to a lasting domination. Traditional competition law has been concerned with the existence of market power and the conduct that can abuse it. The DMA adds a forward-looking dimension: it seeks to identify players whose economic position could allow them to sustainably structure digital markets according to their own rules.
This approach leads to a significant shift in perspective. Platforms qualified as gatekeepers are not necessarily sanctioned because they have already committed an offence. They are subject to special obligations because their economic function gives them a specific responsibility for preserving an open competitive environment.
It is this evolution that explains the uniqueness of the DMA in the history of European economic law. While traditional competition law is based on a case-by-case analysis of companies’ behaviour, the new digital regulation seeks to prevent certain situations of imbalance before they produce effects that are difficult to reverse.
The birth of the DMA thus appears to be the consequence of a double observation. On the one hand, the large platforms have created services of considerable economic utility and contributed to a profound transformation of many sectors. On the other hand, the same economic characteristics that explain their success can also limit the ability of markets to bring out new competitors. The challenge is therefore to preserve the benefits of digital innovation while preventing the concentration of economic power from leading to a gradual closure of markets.
2. The limits revealed by fifteen years of application of Article 102 TFEU: why traditional competition law was no longer sufficient. The European experience acquired since the early 2000s shows a more nuanced reality than an opposition between a supposedly outdated competition law and a supposedly entirely new digital regulation. Article 102 TFEU has demonstrated a real capacity to adapt to the transformations of the digital economy. The decisions taken against Microsoft and then against Google established that the classic principles of abuse of dominant position could be used to apprehend certain specific behaviors of platforms.
However, this experiment also revealed structural limitations. European competition law is fundamentally based on a remedial logic: it intervenes when a dominant company has adopted behaviour likely to produce anticompetitive effects. That method presupposes an in-depth analysis of the markets concerned, a precise economic demonstration of the effects produced and an adversarial examination which may be subject to in-depth judicial review.
This requirement is an essential guarantee of legal certainty. It prevents a company from being sanctioned solely because of its size or economic success. But it also implies a long time frame, which is sometimes difficult to reconcile with the speed of evolution of digital markets.
The Microsoft affair in the early 2000s had already revealed this tension. The European Commission had sanctioned the use of the dominant position of the Windows operating system to favour the Windows Media Player and then imposed certain obligations concerning interoperability.[73] This case set a major precedent: it demonstrated that a company controlling critical digital infrastructure could use this position to expand its power into neighbouring markets.
However, several years had passed between the opening of the investigation, the Commission’s decision and the final outcome of the dispute. However, in digital markets, a few years can be enough to profoundly change economic balances. This difficulty was to be found, amplified, in the cases concerning Google.
The Google Shopping case, officially opened by the Commission in 2010 and concluded with a sanction decision in 2017, illustrates this time constraint. In the seven years between the initiation of the investigation and the final decision, the online search and comparison shopping markets had changed significantly.[74] The remedies adopted by the Commission were aimed at correcting a past practice, but their ability to fully restore a competitive dynamic initially affected remained difficult to measure.
The same observation appears in the Android case. The Commission considered that Google‘s agreements with mobile phone manufacturers had strengthened the dominance of its search engine on mobile devices. But by the time the decision was adopted in 2018, Android had already become one of the most widely used mobile operating systems in the world and the application ecosystem associated with Google was central to the digital economy.[75]
These cases show a fundamental difficulty: in markets characterized by network effects and cumulative advantages, late intervention can legally correct behaviour without necessarily profoundly changing the resulting economic structure.
This limitation is also linked to the nature of the remedies traditionally used in competition law. The authorities often favour behavioural obligations: modification of contracts, prohibition of a specific practice, obligation to treat certain competitors fairly. These remedies are necessary, but they require continuous monitoring and can be difficult to adapt when the company concerned has a capacity for innovation and transformation that is far greater than that of the regulator.
The case of Google is particularly revealing. The Commission’s various decisions have successively addressed several manifestations of its power: online search, the mobile system, digital advertising. Each of these cases has been legally important. But their accumulation also reveals a reality: the competitive problem was not limited to a particular behavior, but to the central position occupied by Google in several interdependent digital value chains.
This observation gradually led the European institutions to consider that intervention based solely on Article 102 TFEU did not always make it possible to respond effectively to the specific characteristics of platforms. It was not a question of abandoning competition law, but of recognising that it should be supplemented by an instrument capable of acting more quickly on structural situations.
A table in Appendix 1 on the main European decisions concerning Google between 2000 and 2026 underlines that Google‘s European trajectorycan be read as a succession of procedures based first on classic competition law, then supplemented by an ex ante regulatory regime specific to gatekeepers. This chronology highlights two successive but now coexisting regimes. From 2010 to 2025, the bulk of the Commission’s action is based on Article 102 TFEU: it is necessary to identify a dominant position, to characterise abusive behaviour and to conduct a legal and economic analysis that may be subject to judicial review. The Android procedure spectacularly illustrates the length of this sequence: the 2018 decision only found its judicial end with the Court’s judgment of 2 July 2026. From 2024, a second logic appears with the DMA. Intervention no longer depends on the prior demonstration of abuse within the meaning of Article 102 TFEU, but on ex ante regulatory obligations applicable to gatekeepers. The measures of July 2026 are particularly significant in this respect: the Commission is no longer satisfied with noting and sanctioning past behaviour; it may specify the specific terms and conditions for access to data, interoperability and operation of Google‘s services. This evolution constitutes one of the central elements of the transformation studied in this article: the DMA does not abolish Article 102 TFEU and should not be assimilated or confused with it: on the other hand, it adds to the European arsenal an instrument that makes it possible to deal with certain situations of digital power through a preventive, structural and continuous logic. This reflection is clearly reflected in the report submitted to the European Commission in 2019 by Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, already cited. The authors point out that certain characteristics of digital markets – the importance of data, network effects, the advantages of scale and the difficulty of change for users – can create positions of power that are particularly resistant to traditional competitive mechanisms.[76]
The report does not recommend the disappearance of competition law. On the contrary, it proposes a link between two complementary instruments: the traditional control of anticompetitive behaviour and a specific regulation of actors occupying a systemic function in the digital economy.
It is this logic that leads to the DMA. The new regulation does not consider that large platforms would necessarily be guilty of abuse. It considers that certain economic characteristics justify, for operators meeting the gatekeeper criteria, preventive obligations intended to guarantee the opening of the markets.
The birth of the DMA must therefore be understood as the result of institutional learning. For fifteen years, the European Union has used traditional competition instruments to try to regulate the behaviour of the major platforms. This experience has made it possible to identify problematic practices and to affirm important legal principles. But it has also shown that, in some digital markets, back-testing can take place after key economic structures have already been sustainably transformed.
3. The DMA : a digital sectoral regulation inspired by network industries. The originality of the Digital Markets Act lies less in the specific obligations it imposes on the large platforms than in the change in legal logic it introduces. Since the origins of European integration, competition law has been based on a fundamental principle: companies remain free to organise their economic activity, but this freedom is limited when their behaviour undermines the competitive functioning of the markets. Public intervention then intervenes mainly after the identification of problematic behaviour.
Although it is not always clearly admitted by some commentators, the DMA follows a different logic from Article 102 on abuse of dominant position. This is a major aspect that is not emphasized often enough.[77] It obviously does not call into question the application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, which remain fully applicable to digital platforms. However, it considers that certain specific economic situations justify preventive intervention where operators have a structural capacity to influence market access conditions in the long term. The DMA and Article 102 are not part of the same block and therefore do not fall under the same block of future case law as the one relating to the implementation of Articles 101 and 102, contrary to what the major law firms representing and defending Google and the major American or Chinese digital operators would like to accept.
The legislative evolution that led to the adoption of the DMA brings it closer to the major European sectoral regulations that have developed since the 1990s in sectors formerly characterised by public monopolies or essential infrastructure: telecommunications, energy, rail transport, postal services or financial markets. In these sectors, the European legislator has gradually taken the view that the effective opening up of the markets cannot depend solely on an ex post facto sanction for abuses. It required the prior establishment of rules guaranteeing fair access to essential infrastructure and the possibility for new operators to compete with the incumbents, although they often called into question the positions of the incumbent operators, to the great displeasure of some Member States, including France.
The parallel with telecommunications is particularly enlightening. When it began the liberalisation of this sector, the European Union did not wait for the former monopolies to necessarily adopt explicitly anti-competitive behaviour before intervening. It imposed specific obligations on operators with significant market power in order to allow for effective competition. The logic was less punitive than structural: to organize the conditions of an open market.[78]
The DMA translates this philosophy into the digital economy. The large platforms designated as gatekeepers are not qualified as companies that have necessarily committed an infringement. They are considered to be in a special position due to several cumulative criteria: the importance of their activity in the internal market, the intermediation role between businesses and end-users, the sustainability of their position and their ability to influence the conditions of access to certain key digital services.[79]
This approach is an important innovation. Traditional competition law generally seeks to answer the following question: « Has a dominant undertaking engaged in abusive behaviour? » The DMA asks a different question, in a context where the European Union has not been able to ensure the development of giant digital operators such as those in the United States or China. The DMA asks the question : « Does a company occupy such a position in the digital ecosystem that it is necessary to impose certain obligations on it in order to preserve the contestability of the market? »
The difference is not only semantic! It modifies the very nature of public intervention. In the context of Article 102 TFEU, the Commission must demonstrate the existence of a dominant position, abusive conduct and anticompetitive effects. In the context of the DMA, the Commission identifies categories of players who meet objective criteria and imposes general obligations on them to prevent certain conduct that may weaken competition.
This approach also explains why the DMA uses the notion of gatekeeper rather than that of dominant company. A platform can play a systemic role without this position necessarily being analysed according to the classic criteria of domination of a single market. Its power often results from its simultaneous control of several services, the centrality of its infrastructure and the economic dependence it can create around it.
The notion of gatekeeper thus reflects a change in economic analysis in Europe. Contemporary digital power is not only a power of production or price-setting; it is also a power of market organization. Whoever controls access to users, data or technical infrastructure can indirectly influence the conditions of competition in several sectors. This is true for all digital markets, including the one we recently analysed in detail: the market data, which controls and locks in financial markets worth several hundred trillion € worldwide.[80]
This conception is in line with the analyses developed by Mario Draghi in his 2024 report on European competitiveness. It underlines that Europe’s lag in digital technologies is not only the result of a lack of innovation, but also of an institutional difficulty in quickly adapting regulatory and economic frameworks to technological transformations. Europe has a large market and significant scientific capabilities, but it suffers from a lack of large platforms capable of competing with the major American and Chinese players.[81]
In this perspective, the DMA meets a double ambition. It first pursues a competitive objective: to prevent a few platforms from being able to permanently lock in certain digital markets. But it also pursues a broader economic objective, of a quasi-industrial, strategic nature: to create or preserve an environment that allows European companies to develop new solutions without being entirely dependent on the infrastructures controlled by a few non-European global operators.
However, this ambition explains all the ambivalence of the system. Ex ante regulation offers a response to the identified limits of traditional competition law. But it also introduces new challenges. Defining the appropriate obligations, avoiding stifling innovation, maintaining proportionality between the economic power of platforms and the constraints imposed on them are all challenges that the Commission will have to address.
The DMA therefore represents less a break with the European tradition of economic regulation than a new stage of it. As in telecommunications or energy, the European Union considers that some markets cannot function effectively without specific rules designed to ensure their openness. The fundamental difference is that critical infrastructure is no longer necessarily a physical network: it can now be an algorithm, a database, an operating system or a digital interface.
The real question that now arises is that of effectiveness. Having identified the limits of ex-post control and adopted an ambitious ex-ante instrument, the European Union must demonstrate that it has the necessary institutional, technical and political means to enforce its rules against the world’s most powerful platforms.
B. The implementation of the DMA in the face of Google and other gatekeepers: first confrontations, adaptations and limits (2023-2026)
The entry into force of the Digital Markets Act is a decisive moment in the history of European digital regulation. After several years of debates, reports and preparatory work, the European Union now has an instrument to directly change the behaviour of platforms considered systemic. For the first time, the Commission is no longer only in the position of a competition authority investigating potentially abusive practices: it is also becoming a regulatory authority responsible for permanently monitoring compliance with obligations imposed ex ante.
This development profoundly changes the institutional relationship between Brussels and the major digital platforms, if the Commission dares to apply its new text without being inhibited by powerful geopolitical pressures from outside the EU and intended to challenge its rule of law. For nearly two decades, the Commission had acted primarily through lengthy proceedings aimed at establishing specific abuses, heavily supported by extensive investigations and voluminous reports. With the DMA, it intends to intervene more quickly, by imposing general rules designed to prevent certain practices even before they produce structural effects on the markets.
However, the transition from theory to practice immediately reveals the complexity of the exercise. The obligations of the DMA are ambitious, but their concrete interpretation requires an ongoing dialogue between the regulator and the companies concerned. Large platforms have considerable resources to adapt their business models, modify their technical interfaces and look for new compliance strategies.
The application of the DMA thus appears to be a real institutional test. It will make it possible to assess whether the European Union has indeed found an instrument capable of rebalancing economic relations in the digital world or whether the practical constraints of its application, particularly geopolitical, will limit the scope of this new regulation.
Google’s experience is central to this first phase. Because of the diversity of its activities — online search, digital advertising, mobile operating system, app store, browser — the company is almost a textbook case for measuring the ability of the DMA to handle situations of vertical integration and complex digital ecosystems.
1. The designation of gatekeepers and the entry into force of the new European regime. The first concrete step in the implementation of the DMA was the identification of the companies to which the new regime was to apply. Unlike traditional competition law, which intervenes after a detailed analysis of a market and a specific behaviour, the DMA is based on a logic of prior qualification. The aim is to identify operators whose economic position gives them a particular ability to influence the functioning of digital markets in the long term.
The Regulation adopts three sets of cumulative criteria: a significant economic dimension in the internal market, the existence of a core platform service linking a significant number of business and end-users, and a position that is sustainable or likely to become sustainable.[82] These criteria reflect the European legislator’s desire not to limit the analysis to the size of a company alone, but to take into account its structural role in the digital ecosystem.
In September 2023, the European Commission designated the first gatekeepers subject to the obligations of the DMA. Six companies were affected: Alphabet, Google‘s parent company, Amazon, Apple, Byte Dance, Meta and Microsoft. Twenty-two core platform services were identified, among them Google Search, Google Play, Android, Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google’s advertising services.[83] This designation constitutes a major development in European economic law. For the first time, a company is not regulated solely because of an abuse, but because of its economic function in the organisation of a market. The logic is preventive: it is a question of preventing certain structural positions from allowing the appearance of behaviour likely to reduce competition in the long term.
In the case of Google, the classification of gatekeeper results less from a single dominant market than from the interconnection between several complementary activities. The search engine provides an essential gateway to digital information[84] ; Android structures access to mobile applications; Google Play organizes the distribution of services on mobile devices; digital advertising links the data collected to advertising intermediation markets. The whole forms an ecosystem whose different components can mutually strengthen the company’s position.[85]
This situation illustrates precisely why the DMA was adopted. An analysis limited to a single market may not capture the real power of a digital operator. The ability to influence multiple markets simultaneously is now an essential element in the assessment of economic power.
The entry into force of the DMA in March 2024 therefore marked a change in the nature of the relationship between the Commission and the platforms. The companies concerned were required to submit compliance reports detailing the measures taken to meet their new obligations. But this initial phase also revealed a major challenge: DMA compliance is not a purely legal operation. It involves profound changes in economic models, technical architectures and commercial relationships that have been in place for more than a decade.
This difficulty is particularly clear in the case of Google, where several legacy services were based precisely on the tight integration between different components of its ecosystem. The central question was therefore not only whether the company would formally accept the European obligations, but whether the changes made would actually restore effective competition.
2. The first confrontations between the Commission and Google: compliance displayed, strategic adaptations and new procedures. The entry into force of the Digital Markets Act has not caused an immediate disruption in the operation of the major digital platforms. Contrary to some initial expectations, the first months of implementation have looked more like a phase of permanent negotiation between the European regulator and the companies concerned. The DMA has imposed important changes, but these changes have been part of a gradual adjustment process in which each actor tries to preserve its economic and institutional interests.
The strategy adopted by Google illustrates this new relationship with the European Commission. The company did not challenge the general legitimacy of the DMA head-on. The Commission has chosen an approach of presenting compliance measures to meet the obligations of the Regulation while limiting disruptions that may affect its business model. This attitude is not surprising: for a platform whose power is largely based on the integration of many complementary services, the main challenge is not only to avoid a penalty, but to preserve the economic coherence of its ecosystem.
As soon as the DMA came into force, Google announced several changes to its main services. In particular, the company has introduced mechanisms allowing European users to choose certain associated services separately, changed certain data processing practices between its different services, and adapted the presentation of certain search results to meet the requirements for self-preference.[86]
These adaptations show an essential characteristic of the DMA : unlike traditional competition decisions, which generally require the cessation of a practice identified as abusive, the regulation obliges platforms to make in-depth changes to certain internal economic relationships. It is no longer just a question of prohibiting a specific behavior, but of transforming certain commercial and technical architectures.
The question of self-preference occupies a central place in this confrontation. Since the Google Shopping case, the Commission considers that the use of a dominant digital infrastructure to favour services belonging to the same group may undermine the normal conditions of competition. The DMA takes up this concern in a more general form by imposing certain obligations on gatekeepers designed to prevent them from exploiting their role as intermediaries to benefit their own services.[87]
In the case of Google Search, the difficulty is particularly significant. The search engine is both a service used directly by consumers and a fundamental access infrastructure for thousands of companies. Changing the way results are displayed, introducing more opportunities for competing services, or limiting the preference for internal services is therefore at the heart of the company’s business model.
However, the European Commission quickly considered that some measures presented as complying with the DMA remained insufficient. In March 2024, it opened several control procedures targeting Alphabet, Apple and Meta, among others, to examine whether their compliance solutions were actually achieving the objectives of the regulation.[88]
With regard to Alphabet, the Commission questioned in particular the preference practices granted to the group’s own services in search results as well as the conditions imposed on developers of applications using Google Play. It also examined the modalities of data collection and combination between different services of the Google ecosystem.
This first confrontation reveals a major difficulty of the DMA : the boundary between legitimate innovation, economic optimization and anti-competitive behavior becomes particularly complex in integrated digital environments. A platform can argue that it improves the user experience by organizing its ecosystem in a consistent way; The regulator may consider that it is using this organisation to artificially maintain its dominant position.[89]
This tension is not unique to Google. It concerns all gatekeepers. Apple is challenging certain obligations relating to its closed model around iOSand the App Store; Meta discusses data usage obligations and advertising models; Amazon must adapt certain practices related to its position as a platform for connecting sellers and consumers.[90]
The application of the DMA therefore reveals a paradox. The European Union now has a legally more powerful instrument than traditional competition law to intervene quickly. But concrete implementation requires a permanent capacity for technical and economic analysis, because the large platforms have a considerable ability to adapt.
The risk identified by some observers is that of essentially formal compliance: platforms would respect the letter of the regulation while retaining most of their economic power thanks to technical or commercial adjustments that are difficult to assess legally. Conversely, an application that is too rigid could lead to limiting certain integrations useful to consumers or certain efficiency gains related to digital ecosystems.
The challenge for the Commission is therefore to find a delicate balance. It must demonstrate that the DMA is not only a declaratory instrument, but a real capacity for transforming markets. But it must also prevent European regulation from being perceived as a simple policy of constraint aimed at large technology companies, at the risk of weakening Europe’s digital attractiveness.
The recent decision on Google illustrates precisely this new phase: after lengthy proceedings under Article 102 TFEU, the Commission is now trying to use the DMA to achieve faster structural changes. The real scope of this new approach will however depend on the European ability to impose sufficiently effective remedies in the face of an actor whose economic, technological and legal resources are exceptional.
3. The already perceptible limits of the DMA : the gap between regulatory ambition and effective capacity to comply. The entry into force of the Digital Markets Act has undeniably changed the legal framework applicable to the major digital platforms. For the first time, the European Union has an instrument designed specifically to act on the structural behaviour of the most powerful players in the digital economy. The change compared to traditional competition law is real: the Commission no longer necessarily waits for an abuse to be fully established and demonstrated after several years of investigation before intervening.
However, this development does not mean that the question of effectiveness has been definitively resolved. The DMA has shifted the centre of gravity of European public action, but it has not removed the fundamental asymmetry between the regulator and the platforms concerned. Large digital companies still have considerable advantages in terms of financial resources, technical expertise, legal capacity, and knowledge of the markets they control.
This asymmetry is probably the main challenge facing the European Commission. The public authority can set obligations, initiate procedures and impose sanctions, but then it must assess highly complex business models and technical architectures, which often evolve faster than administrative procedures.
The problem is therefore no longer only that of the existence of a legal rule. It is that of the effective ability to impose this rule on companies whose global economic power goes far beyond the European framework in which the regulator intervenes.
The question of sanctions is a perfect illustration of this difficulty. The DMA provides for a particularly ambitious regime: the Commission can impose fines of up to 10% of the total worldwide turnover of the company concerned, and up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements. It may also impose structural remedies in the most serious situations.[91]
These amounts appear considerable in absolute terms. They reflect a clear desire on the part of the European legislator to break with the sanctions sometimes considered insufficiently dissuasive in the past. However, their real economic efficiency must be assessed with caution. For a group like Alphabet, whose annual turnover is well over $300 billion and whose market capitalization is several trillion dollars, a financial penalty, even a significant one, may represent only a very limited fraction of its overall economic power.
This observation is in line with a more general question that has been raised for several years in the field of digital antitrust: can a financial sanction really change the behaviour of a company whose business model generates considerable resources and whose market position is based less on an isolated practice than on a set of cumulative advantages?[92]
Previous experience with Google feeds this question. The penalties imposed in the Google Shopping, Google Android and Google AdSense cases totalled several billion euros and were major decisions in the history of European competition law. They affirmed important principles and established the legal responsibility for certain practices. But they have not necessarily led to a profound questioning of the central place occupied by Google in the European digital economy.
The DMA seeks to go beyond this limit by favouring permanent obligations rather than an exclusively punitive logic. However, this ambition raises a new difficulty: ex ante regulation requires a capacity for continuous intervention. The Commission must not only find shortcomings, but also assess whether the changes proposed by the platforms actually produce the expected economic effects.
In the case of Google, this question is particularly complex. Can an apparent change in interface, contract or technical procedure really open up the market to competitors? Or does it only allow for a minimal adaptation that preserves the essence of the existing ecosystem? The answer presupposes a detailed economic analysis, going beyond formal compliance with the obligations of the regulation.
The decision adopted by the European Commission in the summer of 2026 concerning Google is therefore a first major test of the credibility of the DMA. After several months of examining the compliance measures presented by the company, the Commission has chosen to use the new regulatory instrument to sanction practices considered incompatible with the obligations imposed on gatekeepers.[93]
This decision has a particular symbolic significance. Its financial amount — important in the history of European digital regulation — remains to be assessed in the light of the economic power of the group concerned. It thus illustrates the permanent tension of the DMA : demonstrating a capacity for constraint without necessarily having an economic balance of power comparable to that of regulated companies.
More broadly, the Google affair raises a key question for the future of European digital policy: can regulation compensate for the absence of major European champions capable of competing directly with American and Chinese platforms? The DMA does not aim to artificially create new players, but it seeks to prevent existing positions from making their emergence impossible.
This question is in line with the analyses developed in the Draghi report on European competitiveness. He points out that Europe is lagging behind in several strategic digital sectors and that this delay cannot be made up for by regulation alone. An effective digital policy also requires a capacity for investment, innovation and industrial development.[94]
The DMA therefore appears to be a necessary but not sufficient condition. It can help restore more contestability in certain digital markets, but it will not replace entrepreneurial innovation, massive investment in the technologies of the future, or a broader European strategy.
The first phase of the implementation of the DMA thus reveals a paradoxical situation. The European Union now has one of the most advanced legal instruments in the world to regulate systemic platforms. But the effectiveness of this instrument will depend on its ability to be applied with consistency, expertise and determination in the face of companies that have exceptional means to defend their interests.
The DMA therefore marks a change in the legal paradigm. It does not yet necessarily constitute a change in the economic paradigm.
This evolution invites us to go beyond the sole case of Google. More broadly, the contemporary digital economy is now based on the control of information resources that have become essential to the functioning of markets. Data is no longer just an input to economic activity; They have gradually become a strategic infrastructure whose conditions of access, processing, dissemination and development directly influence the intensity of competition. This observation is in line with the analyses we have recently developed about financial market data. In these sectors too, some operators concentrate the control of data essential to the functioning of capital markets, raising comparable questions about the conditions of access, price transparency, the effects of economic dependence and the effective contestability of markets. The Google case thus appears to be one of the most visible manifestations of a more general phenomenon: the growing concentration of information infrastructures within a few global groups is gradually leading economic law to renew its instruments of analysis, competition and regulation.[95]
Finally, this development raises a broader question, which now goes beyond the framework of European law. The major digital platforms have become global economic players whose activities are part of power relations that go far beyond the borders of the European Union. Their regulation thus raises questions of geopolitics and international economic policy, cooperation between competition authorities and, more broadly, the governance of global markets.
A table in Annex 2 presents chronologically the national responses to the power of Google between 2010 and 2026, with the main interventions of national authorities, their legal bases, their results and their scope. National experience thus confirms that the response to the power of the large platforms has never been limited to the action of the European Commission. A first phase, mainly between 2010 and 2019, saw the national authorities (of France, Germany, Italy) mobilise the traditional instruments of competition law to understand Google‘s particular practices, whether it be online advertising, access to digital ecosystems or relations with press publishers. A second phase between 2020 and 2023 revealed a more structural approach, particularly visible in Germany with § 19a GWB, which allows the Bundeskartellamt to qualify beforehand the predominant importance of a company for competition in several markets before examining some of its practices. A third phase, from 2024 to 2026, since the entry into force of the DMA, is characterised by the coexistence and articulation of national interventions, traditional European competition law and European ex ante regulation. This development shows that the DMA is neither the simple transposition at the European level of a national mechanism, nor a new way of applying Article 102 TFEU: it is part of a broader architecture, in which ex post instruments of competition law remain necessary to sanction abuses, while ex ante regulation aims to prevent certain practices of systemic operators before they produce effects that are difficult to reverse. The German experience of § 19a GWB also shows that a preventive and structural approach can be devised without abandoning traditional competition law. The experience of the Member States has thus contributed, through a form of gradual sedimentation of instruments, to the need for complementarity between behavioural control, structural intervention and sectoral regulation of the large platforms.
C. The geopolitical issue: European platform regulation in the face of the United States and China
The Google affair cannot be fully understood without placing European action in a profoundly transformed international environment. Large digital platforms are not just private companies operating in global markets; They have become economic players whose infrastructure, data and technologies occupy a strategic place in contemporary economies.
This dimension explains the singularity of the European debate. The European Union is now one of the few political spaces in the world that has chosen to impose a binding regulatory framework on the major American digital platforms. This position has led to it being presented alternately as a global precursor of digital regulation or as a player with significant normative power but insufficient technological power.
The issue therefore goes far beyond the mere control of anti-competitive behaviour. It affects economic sovereignty, the control of essential digital infrastructure and the ability of liberal democracies to regulate companies whose power can sometimes rival that of states.
This issue appears all the more important as the United States itself has been experiencing a movement for several years to challenge the growing concentration of economic power of the major platforms. The American debate shows that European concerns are not isolated: they are linked to internal questions within the American ecosystem on the preservation of innovation, competition and democratic balance.[96]
China, however, is following a different trajectory. While Europe favours a legal approach based on regulation and general obligations, Beijing has developed a more directly administrative method, combining political control, economic regulation and national strategic objectives.
The comparative analysis of these three areas — the European Union, the United States and China — thus makes it possible to better measure the real scope of the DMA. We’ll come back to that. The issue is not only whether Brussels can sanction Google, but whether the major democracies collectively have the means to establish common rules to regulate globalised economic players.
This evolution also leads to a broadening of the reflection beyond the sole functioning of search engines or application stores. More broadly, the contemporary digital economy is based on the mastery of information resources that have become essential to the functioning of markets. Data is no longer just an input to economic activity; They have become a strategic infrastructure whose availability, access conditions, processing methods and possibilities of reuse directly influence the competitive structure of the markets. This observation is in line with the analyses developed about financial market data, where some operators are gradually concentrating the control of data that is essential to the functioning of the capital markets. In these sectors too, the problem is no longer just that of price or quality of service, but that of the conditions of access to a resource that has become essential to economic activity itself. The questions raised by Google thus appear to be one of the manifestations of a more general phenomenon: the emergence of an economy based on the concentration of data, digital infrastructures and information processing capacities, which is gradually leading economic law to renew its instruments of analysis and regulation.[97]
1. The United States: between the power of platforms and the gradual return of antitrust. For a long time, the United States was presented as the model opposed to the European approach. American economic culture, strongly influenced since the 1970s by the Chicago School, has traditionally placed particular emphasis on efficiency gains, innovation, and the immediate well-being of the consumer (consumer welfare standard). This orientation often led the American authorities to favor a cautious approach to large technology companies, considering that their success was mainly the result of their capacity for innovation.
This difference in approach partly explains the historical contrast between the relative speed of European action against certain Google practices and the more hesitating attitude of the American authorities. While the European Commission opened an investigation into the search engine in 2010, the American federal authorities did not initiate a comparable procedure likely to profoundly challenge the company’s business model.[98]
However, this situation has gradually changed. From the late 2010s onwards, a growing number of American economists, lawyers, policymakers and economic actors began to consider that the specific characteristics of digital markets made an analysis based exclusively on prices and the immediate benefit for the consumer insufficient.
Critics have focused on several phenomena: network effects, data accumulation, acquisitions of potential competitors, vertical integration and the ability of large platforms to control the conditions of access to their ecosystems. These concerns have led to a gradual questioning of certain assumptions inherited from traditional antitrust.[99]
The House Judiciary Committee‘s report published in 2020 is an important moment in this evolution. After a sixteen-month investigation into the practices of the main US digital platforms – Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta – the report concludes that some companies have considerable market power and recommends a significant strengthening of the US antitrust framework.[100]
The most visible development concerns the action taken against Google. In October 2020, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing it of illegally maintaining a dominant position in online search and related advertising through exclusivity agreements and practices that limit competition.[101] This procedure culminated in a major decision in 2024 by a U.S. federal court recognizing that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in general online search.[102]
This American development is particularly interesting for European analysis. It confirms that the concerns that led to the DMA are not solely European or linked to a desire to regulate foreign companies. They correspond to a more general question about the compatibility between the power of digital platforms and the normal functioning of competitive markets.
However, the United States continues to face its own contradictions. Large digital platforms are also seen as strategic assets of American power. Their global leadership in artificial intelligence, cloud, data and digital infrastructure is a major geopolitical advantage over China. Any policy of constraint must therefore deal with a tension between two objectives: to preserve internal competition and to maintain American technological superiority.
This tension partly explains the American political hesitations. Unlike the European Union, which can act through relatively unified regulations, the United States must reconcile the action of federal agencies (DOJ, FTC), judicial decisions, congressional debates and strategic considerations related to competition with China.
American developments nevertheless show a gradual rapprochement with certain European concerns. Without exactly following the DMA model, the United States seems to increasingly recognize that large digital platforms cannot be analyzed as simple innovative companies with commercial success, but as economic infrastructures whose operation can have systemic consequences.
2. China: direct state regulation of national digital giants. The Chinese experience is a third model of response to the growing power of digital platforms. Unlike the European Union and the United States, which have long hesitated on how to adapt their competition laws to the realities of the digital economy, China has gradually integrated the regulation of large platforms into a broader strategy of economic, technological and political control.
This approach is not based on the same philosophy as that of the DMA. The European Union’s main objective is to preserve the contestability of markets and to prevent a dominant economic position from jeopardising the competitive functioning of the economy. China has a broader objective: to maintain control of sectors considered strategic, to avoid the emergence of autonomous economic powers that could compete with the public authority and to steer large technology companies towards the priorities defined by the state.
This fundamental difference explains the speed and radicality of some Chinese interventions. Where the European Union proceeds through investigations, adversarial procedures and legally regulated decisions, the Chinese authorities have administrative instruments that allow for much more direct intervention.
Chinese developments have been particularly interesting since the adoption of the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) that came into force in 2008. Initially inspired by the main international principles of competition law, this legislation has gradually acquired a strategic dimension in the digital sector. The creation and strengthening of the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) in 2018 has helped to further centralise the control of anticompetitive practices, particularly in the digital economy.[103]
For several years, however, the Chinese authorities have encouraged the rapid development of their national digital champions. Groups such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance have benefited from an environment that allows them to grow rapidly, especially in a context where the major American platforms were largely absent from the Chinese market. This policy has led to the emergence of players capable of competing globally in certain sectors.
But from 2020-2021, Beijing has embarked on a major turning point. The aborted IPO of the Ant Group, Alibaba’s financial subsidiary, in November 2020 is a symbolic event of this new phase. A few weeks after Jack Ma’s public criticism of Chinese financial regulation, the authorities suspended the operation and then embarked on a major reorganization of the group.[104]
This case marks a change in doctrine. The problem was no longer just competition between private companies, but whether certain platforms had become powerful enough to influence key sectors — finance, e-commerce, data, information — without sufficient political oversight.
The regulatory campaign that followed affected the entire Chinese digital ecosystem. In 2021, SAMR fined Alibaba 18.2 billion yuan (about 2.3 billion euros at the time) for monopolistic practices related in particular to the exclusivity clauses imposed on the platform’s sellers.[105] This sanction was presented as an enhanced application of the AML, but it was also part of a broader political will to « rein in the disorderly expansion of capital ».
The Chinese authorities also intervened in the field of data, digital security and algorithms. The Data Security Law (2021), the Personal Information Protection Law (2021) and the rules on algorithms have gradually formed a regulatory framework that is much broader than just competition law.[106]
The comparison with the DMA is particularly enlightening here. Both systems recognise that digital platforms can no longer be treated like ordinary businesses. Both consider that the concentration of data, users and digital infrastructures creates specific risks requiring appropriate instruments. But the purposes diverge profoundly.
The DMA seeks to restore competition between independent economic actors. It aims to prevent a gatekeeper from using its intermediation position to promote its own services or close access to the market.
China’s regulation is also aimed at competition, but it is part of a broader conception in which economic stability, national security and the strategic direction of technological development are central. Private economic power must remain compatible with the objectives set by the State. This difference explains why Chinese interventions can be much faster and more restrictive.[107] But it also raises important questions about legal certainty, the predictability of the rules and the economic freedom of companies. The Chinese experience thus shows another possible limitation of the European model. Effective regulation of platforms requires not only ambitious rules, but also strong institutional capacity. China has a state capable of quickly imposing decisions on national companies; the United States has technological champions and considerable financial power; the European Union, for its part, must find an intermediate way based on the law, institutional cooperation and the ability to convince.
This comparison allows us to better understand the originality and difficulty of the European project. The DMA is an attempt to build a model of its own: neither traditional American laissez-faire, nor Chinese administrative control, but economic regulation based on the preservation of open markets. The question remains, however, as to whether this legal approach can be sufficient in the face of companies whose power has become an element of the global competition between major technological blocs.
3. The geopolitical issue: towards a possible dead-end in transatlantic cooperation? The question of international cooperation on digital competition is now being raised in a profoundly different environment than the one that still prevailed in the early 2020s. Since the return of the Trump administration, the United States has increasingly openly challenged the philosophy and scope of European ex ante regulatory mechanisms, foremost among which is the Digital Markets Act. The recent positions taken by the Chairman of the FTC have directly challenged this regulatory approach, in particular by highlighting the differences between the DMA and the American conception of antitrust.[108] This opposition is no longer just a doctrinal divergence between two conceptions of competition law: it is tending to become a political and commercial issue in the transatlantic relationship, even though the European Union continues to apply its regulation – albeit very moderate – with regard to the major platforms, including American ones.
This situation raises a particular difficulty with regard to the democratic legitimacy of the DMA. This is not an administrative structure drawn up unilaterally by the European Commission: it is the result of a legislative process of the Union in which the European Parliament and the Council participated, according to the procedures laid down in the Treaties. The fact that the American authorities can contest the economic relevance or the international effects of certain provisions is naturally a matter of transatlantic debate; But a political questioning of their application to American companies raises a different question, that of the ability of an external power to influence the implementation of democratically adopted legislation in another legal space. The problem is all the more sensitive because the DMA is based precisely on the idea that a world economic power should not be able to evade the rules of the market in which it operates because of its location or nationality. China is thus challenging the Foreign Subsidies Regulation in the same way, the regulation against foreign subsidies adopted almost concurrently with the DMA.[109]
There is therefore a real risk of an impasse. On the one hand, the European Union considers that the effectiveness of the DMA depends on the European Commission’s ability to effectively apply all the obligations imposed on gatekeepers and to remedy practices that are likely to reduce the contestability of markets in the long term. On the other hand, the United States may view some of these obligations as disproportionate or inconsistent with its own understanding of competition policy and may seek to use the diplomatic and trade instruments at its disposal to limit their scope. It should be noted, however, that the US decision not to adopt ex ante regulation comparable to the DMA does not mean a return to antitrust inaction against the big platforms. The recent proceedings by the Department of Justice against Google show, on the contrary, that the United States can now pursue particularly ambitious interventions and seek substantial remedies – on American territory – within the framework of the Sherman Act.[110] But this possible convergence of objectives is not enough to create a convergence of instruments: the European Union intends to act preventively in certain situations of structural power, while the American authorities continue to seek, within the framework of traditional antitrust law, the demonstration of monopolisation or anti-competitive behaviour before drawing appropriate remedies.
Transatlantic cooperation is therefore in danger of being able to make progress only in a limited and pragmatic way for a period of time that is impossible to predict. It would probably be excessive to expect a real common « transatlantic governance » of the major platforms in the short term. Rather, cooperation may have to be sought in multilateral for a that can maintain dialogue even when bilateral political relations deteriorate. The OECD is a first relevant vector in this respect. His recent work shows that competition authorities face common problems in digital markets and that they need to seek new forms of coordination, especially when digital practices affect competition and consumer protection simultaneously.[111] UNCTAD offers a second, more universal way to involve emerging and developing economies in the reflection on the power of platforms and the adaptation of competition instruments. Its Intergovernmental Group of Experts remains explicitly responsible for promoting global cooperation and convergence through dialogue, while having no binding standard-setting function.[112]
The International Competition Network calls for a more nuanced assessment. Its origins are directly linked to American and European reflections on the need for enhanced international cooperation: the network, launched in 2001, is the result of the recommendations of the International Competition Policy Advisory Committee (ICPAC) set up by the American authorities between 1997 and 2001 to counter the work of the working group on the interrelations between trade policy and competition at the WTO. The creation of the ICN ended up being supported by American and European officials. Its stated objective was precisely to promote the convergence of competition policies.[113] This history is both its strength and its limit. The ICN can be seen as one of the instruments for the international dissemination of a certain common antitrust culture, which was originally strongly influenced by American and European conceptions; it cannot therefore be presented as a perfectly neutral body between the different regulatory models. Its informal, voluntary and devoid of normative power also necessarily limits its ability to resolve fundamental divergences.[114]
It would nevertheless be premature to rule out this vector of cooperation. The interest of the ICN could lie precisely in the current period, not in its ability to impose a convergence between the DMA and American law, but in its ability to maintain a professional dialogue when political convergence becomes difficult. FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson’s May 2025 remarks at the ICN annual conference are revealing: they show that substantive disagreement can now be expressed within a forum designed to foster cooperation and convergence.[115] The ICN could thus serve, in the best of cases, to preserve certain areas of technical cooperation: exchange of information, coordination of investigations involving several jurisdictions, reflection on remedies, access to data, interoperability, self-preference or control of acquisitions likely to eliminate potential competitors. It would be less a question of seeking a uniformity of legislation than of preventing their divergence from leading to a complete disarticulation of the authorities’ action.
This cautious approach also applies to the OECD and UNCTAD. These forums obviously cannot compensate for a lasting break in political cooperation between the European Union and the United States. However, they can maintain a common vocabulary, document differences in practice and allow authorities to compare their experiences. The OECD’s most recent work on competition and consumer protection in digital markets, published in May 2026, and the twenty-third session of UNCTAD’s Intergovernmental Group of Experts, held in July 2026, show that international cooperation issues remain on the agenda even as the political conditions for such cooperation have tightened.[116]
This need is all the stronger as digital markets are not experiencing any institutional pause. While authorities debate the legitimacy of ex ante and ex post, the big platforms continue to expand into search, digital advertising, operating systems, cloud, data and now artificial intelligence. The risk is therefore that there will be an increase in the gap between the speed of transformation of economic structures and the ability of public authorities to coordinate their interventions. International cooperation could thus enter a period of uncertainty precisely at a time when it is becoming more economically necessary than ever. The immediate answer probably lies not in the search for a comprehensive transatlantic agreement on the DMA, but in the preservation of the spaces for dialogue and confrontation provided by the OECD, UNCTAD and, with all the necessary cautions, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). In particular, the latter could be put to the test of its own history: created to a large extent on a Euro-American matrix of convergence, it must now demonstrate whether it can still serve as a forum for dialogue when the two poles that have greatly contributed to its birth diverge precisely on one of the major contemporary issues of competition policy. The issue is therefore no longer just whether Europe and the United States can reach a common conception of platform regulation; It is to be determined whether they can preserve sufficient institutional cooperation to prevent digital operators, whose markets evolve at a much faster speed than that of inter-state negotiations, from benefiting from this fragmentation.
The Google saga thus leads to a tentative conclusion: the question is no longer just whether digital platforms should be regulated, but how market democracies can collectively organize this regulation so that economic power remains compatible with freedom of competition.
Conclusion
The decision to apply the DMA by the European Commission to Google in July 2026 is less the culmination of a particular dispute than a revealing moment of a profound transformation of European competition policy applied to the digital economy. It provisionally closes a sequence that began more than twenty-five years ago, during which the European Union has gradually become aware of the difficulty of applying legal instruments designed for traditional markets to companies whose power is based on data, network effects, vertical integration and control of complete digital ecosystems.
The history of the relationship between the European Union and Google thus shows a three-stage evolution. In the first phase, the rapid expansion of US digital platforms was accompanied by a relative inadequacy of the European institutional response. Despite the warnings made by certain politicians, Members of the European Parliament, competing companies and economic observers, the Commission has long favoured a cautious approach, based on the traditional instruments of competition law and on a necessarily lengthy analysis of the economic effects.
This caution was not without legal justification. The review of abuses of a dominant position under Article 102 TFEU is based on a demanding demonstration: it is necessary to identify a dominant position, characterise abusive conduct and establish its anticompetitive effects. However, digital markets have particular characteristics: free services for certain users, multi-sided markets, network effects, strategic importance of data and continuous innovation. These factors have made it more difficult to adapt the traditional categories of competition law immediately.
However, this institutional prudence has also come at an economic cost. The time required for procedures has sometimes allowed large platforms to consolidate their positions, expand their ecosystems and accumulate advantages that are difficult to challenge a posteriori. The paradox of the period 2000-2020 is that European law had powerful instruments, but that their implementation often took place after market structures had changed profoundly.
The second phase corresponds to the gradual increase in European action. The investigations and subsequent sanctions imposed on Google under Article 102 TFEU were major steps in the assertion of European control of the large platforms. The decisions around Google Shopping, Android, and AdSense have helped establish important principles around self-preference, restrictions on digital ecosystems, and the strategic use of dominant positions.
However, these decisions have revealed a key limitation: even significant financial penalties may not be enough to sustainably change the behaviour of companies whose economic power is based on structural advantages accumulated over many years. The question was therefore no longer just to sanction abuses once they were observed, but to prevent certain practices that could close markets before their effects became difficult to reverse.
It is in this context that the Digital Markets Act appeared. The DMA is a major development in European economic law. It does not replace traditional competition law; he completes it with a different logic. While Articles 101 and 102 TFEU seek the existence of anticompetitive conduct and require an individualised assessment of practices, the DMA establishes specific obligations applicable to certain operators considered to be systemic in their intermediation role. This difference is not only technical: it is precisely the raison d’être of the regulation.
This development brings European digital regulation closer to the logics already known in other strategic sectors – telecommunications, energy, transport or financial services – where the effective opening of markets sometimes implies ex ante obligations imposed on essential players. The DMA thus reflects institutional recognition: in some digital markets, preserving competition requires intervention before economic dominance becomes irreversible.
However, this termination should not be understood as the substitution of administrative regulations for competition law. Rather, the DMA should be seen as one of the instruments in a broader package comprising Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, merger control, sectoral regulation and the powers of national authorities. Its specificity lies in the fact that it seeks to act on certain structural characteristics of markets before anti-competitive practices produce effects that are difficult to repair. It is precisely that preventive function which justifies its application not being confined to the categories of case-law gradually developed around Article 102 TFEU.
However, the adoption of the DMA should not lead to any over-optimism. The real question is no longer that of the existence of a legal instrument, but that of its ability to produce real economic effects. The implementation of the Regulation will require constant technical expertise, a thorough investigative capacity and sustained political determination. Large platforms have considerable resources at their disposal to adapt their business models, interpret new obligations and challenge decisions taken against them.
The recent sanction imposed on Google illustrates precisely this ambivalence. It shows a new European desire to effectively enforce its rules and is an important signal to the major platforms. But its effectiveness will have to be assessed not only in terms of its financial amount, but above all in terms of its ability to modify the economic structures and behaviours that have enabled the consolidation of dominant positions. The success of the DMA cannot therefore be measured by the multiplication of procedures alone: it will have to be assessed in the light of the effective contestability of markets, the opening of ecosystems and the possibility for new competitors to emerge.
The comparative analysis also shows that the European Union is not alone in facing this difficulty. The United States has also embarked on a new phase of intervention against the major platforms. The proceedings conducted by the Department of Justice against Google, particularly in the search and digital advertising sectors, testify to a return to a more aggressive American antitrust capable of seeking substantial remedies. This development reveals certain convergences of diagnosis with Europe, but it does not in any way mean a convergence of instruments. The United States remains committed to a mainly ex-post approach based on antitrust law, while the European Union has chosen to add an ex ante mechanism specifically aimed at systemic operators.
This divergence has become even greater since 2025. The positions of American competition officials now openly contest certain characteristics of the DMA. It would therefore be illusory to present the transatlantic relationship as naturally moving towards a common governance of the major platforms. Such a development is still possible in the long term, but it is no longer a sufficiently secure prospect to serve as a basis for European policy. The Union must be able to apply its own law, including when it encounters external political or commercial opposition.
This issue also has a democratic dimension that it would be dangerous to play down. The DMA is not a regulation drawn up unilaterally by the European Commission: it is the result of a legislative process of the Union in which the European Parliament and the Council participated. Its obligations have therefore been defined within the framework of the democratic procedures provided for in the Treaties. The United States is naturally justified in criticising the Union’s economic or regulatory choices; but external challenges to democratically adopted legislation cannot lead the Union to renounce its application on principle. European regulatory sovereignty is as important as the economic efficiency of the system.
China, on the other hand, offers a different model. It has chosen a much more directly administrative regulation of the major national platforms, integrated into a strategy of economic, technological and political control. This comparison reminds us that the issue of digital platforms is now inseparable from the balance of power between major economic areas. Between the Chinese model of administrative control, the American return to an offensive antitrust mainly ex post and the European choice of a combination of competition and ex ante regulation, three distinct conceptions of digital power are now emerging.
In this context, international cooperation remains necessary, but its prospects appear more uncertain. It would be unwise to count on rapid transatlantic convergence at a time when the United States is challenging some of the foundations of the DMA. Cooperation will therefore probably have to be based, at least temporarily, on multilateral forums capable of maintaining dialogue despite political differences: OECD, UNCTAD and the International Competition Network. These forums obviously cannot be a substitute for political cooperation between the major economic powers. They can, however, preserve spaces for technical discussion, promote the exchange of information and experience, and prevent regulatory divergences from degenerating into a complete fragmentation of public action.
In this respect, the ICN calls for a particularly cautious assessment. Its creation, largely inspired by a Euro-American desire for convergence of competition policies, and its historical influence on American and European conceptions constitute both an asset and a limitation. It cannot be considered as a neutral body or as a substitute for the political decision of States. But it may be useful to test his ability to maintain a dialogue between authorities precisely when the models whose rapprochement he has historically favoured begin to diverge. The OECD and UNCTAD, on the other hand, offer complementary, broader frameworks for bringing together jurisdictions and economies that do not necessarily share the same legal traditions or economic interests.
The challenge is all the more serious as digital markets are not experiencing any institutional pause. While authorities debate the legitimacy of ex ante and ex post, the big platforms continue to expand into search, digital advertising, operating systems, cloud, data and now artificial intelligence. The risk is therefore that the gap between the speed of transformation of economic structures and the ability of public authorities to coordinate their interventions will increase. The current period could thus be marked by a particularly worrying contradiction: at the very moment when international cooperation is becoming more economically necessary, the political conditions for this cooperation are becoming more difficult.
The Google case thus reveals a more general transformation of contemporary economic policy. The central question is no longer just whether a company has become too big, but whether an excessive concentration of economic, technological, informational and financial power can compromise the normal functioning of markets and, beyond that, the equilibrium of democratic economies. Faced with this transformation, the European Union can neither give up its regulatory ambition because of transatlantic divergences, nor consider the DMA as a sufficient instrument on its own.
The European Union has made an original choice: not to seek to imitate the American or Chinese model in its entirety, but to build a third way based on the combination of competition law, sectoral regulation, merger control and, when circumstances permit, international cooperation. This path is demanding. It presupposes going beyond the mere production of standards to develop a real capacity for action, expertise and control. It also implies defending the very principle of autonomous European regulation when this is the result of an assumed democratic choice.
The success of the DMA will therefore not be measured only by the number of decisions or the amount of the penalties imposed. It will depend on its ability to restore the contestability of digital markets in the long term, to preserve innovation and to prevent positions of economic, technological and informational power from becoming practically irreversible. It will also depend on the Commission’s ability to resist circumvention strategies, litigation and external pressure without losing the legal rigour that must accompany the exercise of its new powers.
The history of the relationship between the European Commission and Google thus offers a broader lesson. In the face of major technological transformations, the law cannot stand still; But it can only be effective if it is accompanied by a sufficiently strong institutional will, economic expertise and capacity for action. International cooperation remains desirable, but it cannot be a precondition for European action. Should transatlantic cooperation experience a period of deadlock, the Union should continue to apply its own law, while using the available multilateral for a to maintain dialogue as much as possible. This is perhaps the real challenge of the period that is beginning : not to confuse the need to cooperate with the need to give up acting. The DMA can be improved, clarified and possibly corrected in the light of experience, but it should not be abandoned because geopolitical conditions make it temporarily more difficult to seek international convergence. In a digital economy where the power of operators is evolving much faster than the institutions responsible for controlling it, the ability of a democracy to effectively enforce the rules it has set for itself is now an element of its economic sovereignty.
Annex 1 — THE MAIN EUROPEAN DECISIONS CONCERNING GOOGLE (2000-2026)
| Date | Case / intervention | Rationale | Purpose and result |
| 2010 | Opening of the Google Searchgeneral survey | Art. 102 TFEU | The Commission is opening a formal investigation into several practices that could favour Google‘s specialised services and reduce competition in online search. This investigation will give rise to several separate proceedings. |
| 2013-2014 | Draft commitments concerning Google Search | Art. 102 TFEU | The Commission is seeking commitments from Google to address concerns relating to specialised search and self-preference, among others. The process does not result in a final decision on commitments. |
| 27 June 2017 | Google Search (Shopping),AT.39740 | Art. 102 TFEU | Fine of €2.42 billion for favouring its own comparison shopping service in search results to the detriment of competing services. |
| July 18, 2018 | Google Android, AT.40099 | Art. 102 TFEU | Initial fine of €4.34 billion for several Android-related practices, including Google Search and Chrome pre-installation agreements and restrictions on manufacturers. |
| March 20, 2019 | Google AdSense, AT.40411 | Art. 102 TFEU | Fine of €1.49 billion for contractual clauses that restricted the possibility for third-party sites to display ads from Google‘s competitors. |
| March 24, 2021 | Google ad tech | Art. 102 TFEU | Formal opening of an investigation into the online advertising value chain and Google‘s position in the various ad tech segments. |
| March 7, 2024 | Full implementation of the DMA for Google | DMA | Google becomes subject to DMA obligations for several core platform services, including Search, Android, Google Play, Chrome, Maps, YouTube, Shopping and its advertising services. |
| November 13, 2025 | DMA fo downgrading media content in Google Search | DMA | The Commission is opening proceedings to determine whether Googlecomplies with the obligation to apply FRAND conditions of access to publishers’ sites on Google Search. |
| September 5, 2025 | Google AdTech, AT.40670 | Art. 102 TFEU | €2.95 billion fine for self-preference practices in the online advertising value chain; Commission also orders measures to end identified conflicts of interest. |
| July 2, 2026 | Google Android, C-738/22 P | Judicial review of Art. 102 TFEU | The Court of Justice dismissed Google‘s appeal and confirmed the fine of around €4.1 billion, definitively confirming the 2018 Android decision after several years of litigation. |
| July 16, 2026 | DMA specification measures for Android and Google Search | DMA | The Commission adopts binding measures aimed in particular at the interoperability of Android with competing AI services and the access of third-party search engines to Google Search data. |
| July 23, 2026 | Google Search / Google Play – DMA | DMA | Two decisions found violations of the DMA: €460 million for the self-preference of Google services in Search and €430 million for steering restrictions in Google Play, i.e. €890 million in total. The Commission also orders Google to put an end to the practices found. |
Annex 2 — National responses to the power of Google (2010-2026)
| Status | Date | Authority / Case | Legal basis | Sanction / result | Purpose and scope |
| France | Dec 14, 2010 | French Competition Authority, Opinion No. 10-A-29 on the competitive operation of online advertising | Art. 102 TFEU; National law | Notice, without sanction | Early analysis of Google‘s position in online advertising and the competitive risks related to platforms and data. |
| Germany | 2012-2014 | Bundeskartellamt, work on the digital economy and Google | GWB ; European law | Preparatory work, without sanction | First in-depth analyses of the market power of digital platforms, data and business models. |
| France | Dec 19, 2019 | Competition Authority, Google Ads | Art. 102 TFEU; Art. L. 420-2 C. com. | €150 million | Sanction of practices relating to Google Ads policies, deemed opaque and discriminatory. |
| Italy | May 13, 2021 | AGCM, Google / Enel X Italia – Android Auto | Art. 102 TFEU | €102,084,433.91 | Refusal to integrate Enel X‘s JuicePass app into Android Auto; issue of developer access to the Google ecosystem. |
| France | June 7, 2021 | Competition Authority, Google / online advertising (AdTech) | Art. 102 TFEU; National law | €220 million + commitments | Auto-preference in advertising technologies and Google Ad Manager’s interoperability conditions with competitive solutions. |
| Germany | Dec 30, 2021 | Bundeskartellamt, Alphabet/Google | § 19a (1) GWB | Finding of paramount importance for competition in several markets | Structural qualification of Google as an undertaking of exceptional importance for competition, prior to the examination of specific practices. |
| France | June 21, 2022 | French Competition Authority, Google / related press rights | Art. 102 TFEU; National law | Commitments made binding | Conditions of negotiation between Google and publishers and news agencies; transparency and fairness of negotiations. |
| Germany | 2022-2024 | Bundeskartellamt, Google News Showcase | § 19a GWB | Procedure / commitments | Conditions of access for publishers to Google News Showcase and effects on competition in online news. |
| Spain | 2023-2025 | CNMC, Google / related rights | Spanish Competition Law | Procedure and commitments | Conditions of negotiation between Google and publishers and news agencies; economic dependence of the media on Google’s services. |
| France | March 15, 2024 | Competition authority, Google / related rights | Art. 102 TFEU; National law | €250 million | Failure to comply with certain previous commitments, in particular regarding the use of press content and cooperation with the trustee. |
| Germany | 2024-2025 | Bundeskartellamt, Google Automotive Services / Google Maps | § 19a GWB ; articulation with DMA | Commitments accepted on April 9, 2025 | Licensing and access terms for Google services in automotive ecosystems; articulation between national law and DMA. |
| Italy / other Member States | 2024-2026 | National cooperation in the implementation of the DMA | Art. 38 DMA | Cooperation with the Commission | National authorities are involved in the flow of information and in certain investigations relating to gatekeepers. |
| European Union / Member States | 2024-2026 | Cooperation between the Commission and national authorities | DMA, in particular Art. 38 | Institutional cooperation | Gradual shift from a logic of separate national interventions to a combination of national control, European competition law and ex ante regulation of the DMA. |
Annex 3 — Comparative table of the main European, national and US proceedings concerning Google and the major digital platforms
| Space/Authority | Periodine | Main case/proceeding | Legal basis. | Intervention logic° | Main purpose | Outcome/status of the procedure | Structural scope | |
| European Union – Commission | 2004-2007 | Microsoft | Art. 82 EC / now Art. 102 TFEU | Ex post | Interoperability, tying, abuse of dominant position | 2004 decision, essentially upheld by the General Court in 2007; Fines and Behavioural Obligations | High, but intervention after market power has been built | |
| European Union – Commission | 2010-2017 | Google Shopping | Art. 102 TFEU | Ex post | Comparison shopping auto-preference in search results | Decision of 27 June 2017; fine of €2.42 billion; decision confirmed by the General Court in 2021, then essentially by the Court of Justice in 2024 | Jurisprudential Significant, but Late Intervention | |
| European Union – Commission | 2015-2018 | Google Android | Art. 102 TFEU | Ex post | Anti-fragmentation agreements, Google Search/Chrome tying and financial incentives | Decision of 18 July 2018; initial fine of €4.34 billion, reduced to €4.125 billion by the Court in 2022 | Strong, but focused on specific practices | |
| European Union – Commission | 2016-2019 | Google AdSense | Art. 102 TFEU | Ex post | Exclusivity clauses in research-related advertising | Decision of 20 March 2019; fine of €1.49 billion | Targeted intervention on a component of the advertising ecosystem | |
| European Union – Commission | 2019-2024 | Google AdTech | Art. 102 TFEU | Ex post | Advertising intermediation, conflicts of interest and self-preference | Formal investigation opened in 2022; statement of objections in 2023; Moving towards a more structural analysis of the ecosystem | Very important for understanding Google’s vertical power | |
| European Union – Commission | 2022-2026 | DMA – Google | Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 | Ex ante | Gatekeeper obligations : search, data, interoperability, choice, self-preference, etc. | Designation of Google as gatekeeper; obligations applicable since March 2024; compliance procedures and successive decisions | Very high: intervention on practices before demonstrating abuse within the meaning of Art. 102 | |
| Germany – Bundeskartellamt | 2021-2022 | Alphabet/Google – § 19a GWB | § 19a GWB | Preventive/structural | Google’s overriding importance for competition in several markets | This was a decisive finding in December 2021; Subsequent proceedings on several practices | Very High: Structural approach prior to behavioural review | |
| Germany – Bundeskartellamt | 2022-2025 | Google News Showcase / Automotive Services | § 19a GWB | Preventive + Behavioral | Publisher Access, Automotive Services, Licensing Terms, and Ecosystems | Procedures, commitments and increasing articulation with the DMA | High | |
| France – French Competition Authority | 2010 | Online Advertising | Art. 102 TFEU / national law | Ex ante analysis / opinion | Competitive operation of online advertising | Opinion No. 10-A-29 | Important as an early institutional signal | |
| France – French Competition Authority | 2019 | Google Ads | Art. 102 TFEU / national law | Ex post | Google Ads policies, opacity, and discrimination | €150 million | Targeted | |
| France – French Competition Authority | 2021 | Google AdTech | Art. 102 TFEU / national law | Ex post | Ad technologies and interoperability | €220 million + commitments | High in the digital advertising industry | |
| France – French Competition Authority | 2022-2024 | Google – related rights | Art. 102 TFEU / national law | Ex post + commitments | Relations with publishers and news agencies | Commitments and then €250 million in 2024 | Sectoral | |
| Italy – AGCM | 2019-2021 | Google / Enel X – Android Auto | Art. 102 TFEU | Ex post | Competitor app access to the Android ecosystem | €102.1 million approximately | Important for ecosystem access and interoperability | |
| United States – FTC | 2011-2013 | Google Search | Sherman Act § 5 / FTC Act | Ex post / settlement | Search, search bias, advertising and exclusionary practices | Investigation closed in January 2013; no general litigation action against Google Search; Limited commitments on certain behaviors | Low to medium; This case is emblematic of the limits of the American approach of the time | |
| United States – DOJ | 2020-2024 | United States v. Google – Search | Sherman Act §§ 1-2 | Ex post, but structural approach | Monopolization of general search and search-related advertising | Judgment of liability in August 2024; The remedies phase then began | Very high: return to a more structural conception of monopolization | |
| United States – States + DOJ | 2020-2025 | Google Advertising Technology | Sherman Act § 2 | Ex post / structural | Monopolization of ad tech and control of the advertising chain | Federal procedure; Litigation and ongoing remedies | Very high | |
| United States – DOJ | 2023-2026 | Google Play / Android | Sherman Act §§ 1-2 | Ex post | Restrictions on developers and payment systems | Federal Litigation and Remedies | Important | |
| United States – FTC/DOJ | 2020-2026 | Big Tech – general doctrine | Sherman Act / FTC Act | Ex post | Concentration, network effects, acquisitions and platform power | Multiplication of proceedings against Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon | ||
[1] Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941) was a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939, appointed by President Woodrow Wilson. In particular, he is considered one of the precursors of the reflection on the dangers of economic concentration and on the relationship between economic power, freedom and democracy. Justice Brandeis remains one of the major figures in the American antitrust tradition. His thought, attentive to economic concentration, the power of large companies and their effects on economic and political freedom, has experienced a revival of influence over the past ten years in the so-called « neo-Brandeisian » movement, which contests the reduction of antitrust analysis to the sole effects on prices and the immediate well-being of the consumer. This intellectual rehabilitation accompanies the American debate on the power of the major digital platforms and on the possible need for structural remedies.
[2] European Commission, Press Release, « Commission fines Google €890 million for breaches of the Digital Markets Act« , Brussels, 23 July 2026. In practice, these are two decisions finding that Google has failed to comply with its obligations under Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act or DMA): a fine of €460 million for self-preference practices in Google Search, in particular for the benefit of its own services (shopping, hotels, transport, specialised results), and a fine of €430 million for so-called anti-steering practices in Google Play, limiting the possibility for app developers to direct users to alternative offers. The Commission also ordered Google to put an end to the practices found and to comply with the obligations of the DMA.
This €890 million penalty is an exceptional amount in the still very short history of European digital regulation (since 2023): its economic assessment must be put into perspective. Compared to the annual turnover of Alphabet, Google‘s parent company, which now exceeds $400 billion per year, it represents about 0.2% of the group’s annual revenue. Compared to its market capitalization, which fluctuates around $2,000 billion depending on the market period, its relative weight becomes even more limited, less than 0.05% of the company’s market value. The essential scope of the decision therefore lies less in its immediate financial effect than in its structural dimension: it constitutes an attempt to impose ex ante changes in behaviour on a systemic digital operator, where previous financial penalties based on Article 102 TFEU had shown their limits.
[3] We have already analysed the genesis, scope and limits of the Digital Markets Act from a comparative perspective, particularly in relation to the American and Chinese models: Souty F., « European Digital Markets Act, competition policy and sovereignty: geopolitical consequences and strategic impact of the law on the digital economy« , Le Diplomate Média, 4 February 2026, 67 p.; Souty F., « Digital economy, competition policy and regulation: comparative approaches of the European Union, the United States and China« , in Arcelin L. (ed.), European digital regulations and market law, Brussels, Bruylant, 2024, p. 151-181. This work is the extension of a broader reflection on the evolution of European competition law in the face of large digital platforms.
[4] See our analysis on the financial data market, « Financial markets and competition: Transatlantic geopolitics of market data markets « , Le Diplomate Média, 20 May 2026, 49 p. On the difficulties of applying traditional competition law categories to digital markets, see Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, Competition Policy for the Digital Era, report submitted to the European Commission, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union, 2019, esp. pp. 25-76; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Rethinking Antitrust Tools for Multi-Sided Platforms, Paris, OECD Publishing, 2018; European Commission, ‘Communication from the Commission on the definition of the relevant market for the purposes of EU competition law’, OJEU C 164 of 22 June 2024, pp. 1-33, which updates the 1997 Communication to take into account, inter alia, digitalisation, multi-sided markets, innovation and digital ecosystems; see also François Souty, Droit et politique de la concurrence de l’Union européenne, 4th ed., Paris, Montchrestien, coll. « Les Carrés », 2013, spec. the developments devoted to the definition of the relevant market and the evolution of the criteria for assessing market power. Finally, concerning data as a source of market power from a dominant position, we can cite Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke, Virtual Competition, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 2016, particularly in the chapters devoted to algorithms, data and new forms of market power.
[5] On the creation of Google, its initial business model and its rapid expansion into the digital economy, see David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story, New York, Delacorte Press, 2005, 207 p., spec. pp. 1-126 ; John Battelle, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, New York, Portfolio, 2005, 288 p., spec. pp. 87-248 ; Steven Levy, « In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives », New York, Simon & Schuster, 2011, 432 p., esp. p. 17 et seq. For a more economic analysis of digital platforms and their effects on competition, see also Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit.; Alphabet Inc., Annual Report (Form 10-K), various years.
[6] Larry Page and Sergey Brin, « The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, » Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, vol. 30, nos. 1-7, 1998, pp. 107-117; see also historical developments in David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, op. cit., p. 33 et seq.
[7] On the development of Google‘s advertising business model, see Hal R. Varian, « Online Ad Auctions », American Economic Review, vol. 99, no. 2, 2009, pp. 430-434; David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, op. cit. ; Alphabet Inc., Annual Reports, various years.
[8] On network effects, multi-sided markets and the economic characteristics of digital platforms, see in particular Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole, « Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets« , Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 1, no. 4, 2003, pp. 990-1029; David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2016, pp. 115-145; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Two-Sided Markets, DAF/COMP(2009)20, Paris, 2009; Jean Tirole, Économie du bien commun, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2016, p. 363-405.
[9] On Google‘s acquisition strategy and the main mergers of the period 2001-2008, see, inter alia, European Commission, decision of 11 March 2008, Case COMP/M.4731 – Google/DoubleClick; Federal Trade Commission, Statement of the Federal Trade Commission Concerning Google/DoubleClick, 20 December 2007; Alphabet Inc., Annual Reports, various years.
[10] On the difficulties of applying traditional competition law to digital markets, see in particular Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Competition, Data and Innovation, Paris, 2015; Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, Competition Policy for the Digital Era, report submitted to the European Commission, Brussels, 2019; Richard Whish and David Bailey, Competition Law, 9th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, spec. chaps. 1 and 18.
[11] On the logic of the expansion of digital platforms and the importance of ecosystems, see Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., pp. 20-35 ; Nicolas Petit, Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 35-70.
[12] On digital advertising markets and their multifaceted nature, see David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, op.cit., pp. 115-145.
[13] On the difficulty of measuring the economic value of free digital services, see Crémer, de Montjoye, Schweitzer, op. cit., pp. 39-42 ; OECD, Competition and Digital Economy, Paris, 2012.
[14] European Commission, decision of 18 July 2018, case AT.40099 – Google Android ; General Court of the European Union, judgment of 14 September 2022, T-604/18, Google and Alphabet v Commission.
[15] Google Inc., press release on the acquisition of YouTube, November 13, 2006; Alphabet Inc., Annual Report 2023, YouTube section.
[16] European Commission, decision of 11 March 2008, COMP/M.4731 – Google/DoubleClick ; Federal Trade Commission, Statement Concerning Google/DoubleClick, 20 December 2007.
[17] On subsequent debates regarding DoubleClick and the concentration of advertising data, see Lina M. Khan, « Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, » Yale Law Journal, vol. 126, 2017, pp. 710-805.
[18] On the comparison between digital platforms and the theory of critical infrastructure, see European Commission, Guidance on the Commission’s Enforcement Priorities in Applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings, OJEU C 45, 24 February 2009, pp. 7-20; Richard Whish and David Bailey, Competition Law, 9th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 742-760.
[19] On the first complaints against Google‘s online search and digital advertising practices, see, inter alia, European Commission, Press Release IP/10/1624, « Antitrust: Commission probes allegations of antitrust violations by Google », 30 November 2010; European Commission, Case AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping)
[20] On the role of Foundem in the emergence of European litigation against Google, see Foundem, « Google Search Neutrality« , dossier presented to the European Commission, 2009-2010; see also Shivaun Raff and Adam Raff, « Google and the Search Neutrality Debate« , various public contributions, 2010-2012.
[21] On the issue of the control of digital intermediaries and market access, see Nicolas Petit, op.cit., pp. 55-90 ; Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P. Grunes, Big Data and Competition Policy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 85-120.
[22] Id. at note 17.
[23] European Parliament resolutions and work on search engines, digital platforms and competition: European Parliament, resolution of 27 November 2014 on supporting the competitiveness of the digital internal market; see also the work of the IMCO Committee.
[24] On the German Approach and the Ordoliberal Tradition to Digital Platforms: Heike Schweitzer, Justus Haucap, Wolfgang Kerber and Robert Welker, Modernising the Law on Abuse of Market Power. Report for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2018, 199 p., esp. pp. 15-82 and pp. 131-199; Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, Competition Policy for the Digital Era, op.cit., spec. pp. 25-76.
[25] On the pioneering role of national competition authorities in the analysis of digital platforms, seeCompetition Authority, Opinion No. 10-A-29 of 14 December 2010 on the competitive operation of online advertising, Paris, 2010, spec. p. 81-160, available on the website of the Autorité de la concurrence:Opinion No. 10-A-29; see also the early work of theBundeskartellamton the digital economy in the early 2010s, extended by the studies published in theCompetition and Consumer Protection in the Digital Economy, available on the official « Digital Economy » portal:Bundeskartellamt – Digital Economy, as well as the heading » Digital Markets » giving access to working documents on platforms, data and algorithms:Bundeskartellamt – Digital Markets.
[26] European Commission, Press release IP/10/1624, 30 November 2010, Initiation of investigation into Google’s search practices
[27] Joaquín Almunia, « Competition and innovation in the digital economy », speech, European Parliament, 2012; Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition.
[28] On the Google Search (Shopping) case and the difficulties in applying Article 102 TFEU to digital markets, see European Commission, Decision C(2017) 4444 final of 27 June 2017 (Case AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping)), OJEU C 9 of 12 January 2018; Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, « The Commission’s Google Search (Shopping) Decision: The Need to Test for Anticompetitive Effects », Journal of European Competition Law & Practice, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2018, pp. 83-91; Nicolas Petit, « The Google Shopping Case: The Economics of Self-Preferencing », European Law Review, vol. 42, 2017, pp. 777-787.
[29] François Souty, Droit et politique de la concurrence de l’Union européenne, 4th ed., Paris, Montchrestien, coll. « Clefs », 2013, in particular the developments devoted to Article 102 TFEU, the notion of dominant position, abusive practices and contemporary developments in European competition law; see also Richard Whish and David Bailey, op.cit., Spec. chap. 5 and 6.
[30] François Souty, Ibid., in particular the arguments devoted to Article 102 TFEU, the concept of dominant position and abusive practices; Richard Whish and David Bailey, op.cit., pp. 173-260.
[31] Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., p. 33-42.
[32] Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P. Grunes, op.cit., pp. 65-110.
[33] Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole, « Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets », Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 1, No. 4, 2003, pp. 990-1029; David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, op.cit..
[34] Ibid.
[35] European Parliament, resolution of 27 November 2014 on supporting the competitiveness of the digital internal market; see also the debates on the Google Search case in the European Parliament’s IMCO Committee.
[36] European Parliament, resolution of 27 November 2014 on supporting the competitiveness of the digital internal market; see also the debates on the Google Search case in the European Parliament’s IMCO Committee.
[37] In the United States, see Federal Trade Commission, Statement of the Federal Trade Commission Regarding Google’s Search Practices, Washington, D.C., 3 January 2013, accompanying the decision terminating the investigation into the search engine practices, available on the FTC’s official website : FTC – Statement of the Federal Trade Commission Regarding Google’s Search Practices (3 January 2013). See also United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?, Hearing, Washington, D.C., September 21, 2011, available on the official Senate website: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee – The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition? ; see also the other hearings and work of the Senate Judiciary Committee on competition in digital markets between 2011 and 2012: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee – Hearings Archive.
[38] On the question of the time of competition law in the face of digital markets: Nicolas Petit, op.cit., pp. 90-125.
[39] On the transition between ex-post and ex ante control of platforms: Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., p. 57-70.
[40] Nicolas Petit, op.cit., pp. 125-160 ; Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., p. 55-70.
[41] European Commission, decision of 27 June 2017, Case AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping), OJ C 9 of 12 January 2018, recitals 1-50.
[42] European Commission, Press Release IP/10/1624, « Antitrust: Commission probes allegations of antitrust violations by Google », 30 November 2010.
[43] European Commission, Decision AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping), supra, recitals 341-550.
[44] European Commission, Press release IP/17/1784, « Antitrust: Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service », 27 June 2017.
[45] Richard Whish and David Bailey, op.cit., pp. 193-280 ; François Souty, Droit et politique de la concurrence de l’Union européenne, op.cit., développements relatives à l’article 102 TFEU.
[46] European Commission, Decision AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping), 27 June 2017, recitals 341-649.
[47] Ibid., recitals 650-700.
[48] Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P. Grunes, op.cit., pp. 135-170.
[49] Joshua D. Wright, « Google and the Limits of Antitrust: The Case Against the Case Against Google, » George Mason Law Review, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2013, pp. 1189-1210; Geoffrey A. Manne and Joshua D. Wright, « Google and the Limits of Antitrust: The Case Against the Antitrust Case Against Google, » Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter 2011, pp. 171-244; Geoffrey A. Manne and William Rinehart, « The Market Realities That Undermined the FTC’s Antitrust Case Against Google, » Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Occasional Paper Series, July 2013, 18 p.
[50] Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector.
[51] General Court of the European Union, judgment of 10 November 2021, Google and Alphabet v Commission, Case T-612/17, EU:T:2021:763.
[52] Ibid., in particular paragraphs 441-540.
[53] Court of Justice of the European Union, Judgment of 10 September 2024, Google and Alphabet v Commission, Case C-48/22 P.
[54] European Commission, Press release IP/15/4780, « Antitrust: Commission opens formal proceedings against Google regarding Android mobile operating system », 15 April 2015.
[55] European Commission, decision of 18 July 2018, case AT.40099 – Google Android; press release IP/18/4581, « Antitrust: Commission fines Google €4.34 billion for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices », 18 July 2018.
[56] European Commission, Decision AT.40099 – Google Android, recitals 738-1199.
[57] General Court of the European Union, judgment of 14 September 2022, Google and Alphabet v Commission, Case T-604/18, EU:T:2022:541.
[58] Ibid., paragraphs 684-720; European Commission, Press release on the General Court decision, 14 September 2022.
[59] On the economic model of digital advertising and the central role of data: Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, New York, PublicAffairs, 2019, p. 63-120; Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P. Grunes, Big Data and Competition Policy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 25-65.
[60] European Commission, Press release IP/16/2532, « Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on comparison shopping and online advertising », 14 July 2016.
[61] European Commission, decision of 20 March 2019, case AT.40411 – Google Search (AdSense); press release IP/19/1770, « Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion for abusive practices in online advertising », 20 March 2019.
[62] On vertical integration in digital markets: Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., pp. 72-90.
[63] The three decisions: European Commission, cases AT.39740 (Google Search Shopping), AT.40099 (Google Android) and AT.40411 (Google Search AdSense).
[64] On the concerns expressed by economic actors and analyses relating to network effects and the risks of foreclosure of digital markets: Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., pp. 15-35 ; Stigler Center, Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms: Final Report, Chicago, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, September 2019, especially pp. 28-45.
[65] European Parliament, Resolution of 27 November 2014 on supporting the competitiveness of the digital internal market (2014/2715(RSP)); European Parliament, Report on Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market, A8-0204/2017, 31 May 2017.
[66] On the distinction between competition law and sectoral regulation: Gérard Marcou, « Economic regulation: a comparative approach », Revue internationale de droit économique, 2004, pp. 5-32; Damien Geradin and Nicolas Petit, op.cit, p. 35-70; François Souty, op.cit.
[67] On multi-sided markets and network effects: Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole, « Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets », Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 1, no. 4, 2003, pp. 990-1029; David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2016.
[68] Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., pp. 15-35.
[69] On the notion of the platform as an economic infrastructure and the limits of traditional instruments of competition: Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P. Grunes, op.cit., pp. 25-65.
[70] On the asymmetric relationship between platforms and business users Fiona M. Scott Morton and David C. Dinielli, Roadmap for a Monopolization Case Against Google Regarding the Search Market, Omidyar Network, Washington (D.C.), June 2020, 79 p.; idem, Roadmap for a Digital Advertising Monopolization Case Against Google, Omidyar Network, Washington (D.C.), May 2020, 95 p. These two reports, written at the initiative of the Omidyar Network, offer a detailed economic and legal analysis of Google’s practices in the online search and digital advertising markets and contributed to the doctrinal and institutional debates preceding the American antitrust proceedings initiated from 2020 onwards. The founders of the Omydiar Network are the Franco-Americans Pierre and Pam Omydiar, creators of the famous digital company Ebay. See also Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., p. 41-72
[71] On the notion of ecosystem in the digital economy: David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, op.cit.; GeoffreyG. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy—and How to Make Them Work for You (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016), 352 p., spec. p. 5-32 (definition and economics of platforms), p. 33-64 (network effects), p. 183-214 (competitive strategies of platforms), p. 215-242 (governance), p. 243-272 (performance measurement), p. 273-294 (platforms and competition policy), p. 295-300 (development prospects).
[72] Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., p. 21-35.
[73] European Commission, Decision 2007/53/EC of 24 March 2004 relating to a proceeding under Article 82 EC (Case COMP/C-3/37.792 – Microsoft), OJEU L 32 of 6 February 2007, pp. 23-28; judgment of the Court of First Instance, 17 September 2007, Microsoft Corp. v. Commission, case No. T-201/04 [2007] ECR II-3601; see also Damien Geradin, The Microsoft Antitrust Cases. Competition Policy for the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, 740 p., spec. pp. 3-118 and pp. 541-676.
[74] European Commission, « Antitrust: Commission opens formal investigation against Google in relation to its online search business », press release IP/10/1624, Brussels, 30 November 2010; European Commission, Decision C(2017) 4444 final of 27 June 2017 (Case AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping)), summarised in OJEU C 9 of 12 January 2018, pp. 11-16. On the discrepancy between the temporality of competition procedures and that of digital markets, see Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., spec. pp. 51-67 ; Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke, op.cit., spec. pp. 37-71; Nicolas Petit, op.cit., spec. pp. 99-125.
[75] European Commission, Decision C(2017) 4444 final of 27 June 2017 (Case AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping)); European Commission, Decision C(2018) 4761 final of 18 July 2018 (Case AT.40099 – Google Android); General Court of the European Union, 10 November 2021, Google and Alphabet v. Commission, case. T-612/17 (Google Shopping); General Court of the European Union, 14 September 2022, Google and Alphabet v. Commission, case. T-604/18 (Google Android); see also Nicolas Petit, op.cit., esp. pp. 93-182.
[76] Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., spec. pp. 25-76 and pp. 83-99; Heike Schweitzer, Justus Haucap, Wolfgang Kerber and Robert Welker, Modernising the Law on Abuse of Market Power. Report for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2018, 199 p., esp. pp. 15-82 and pp. 131-199; European Commission, Commission Staff Working Document – Impact Assessment accompanying the Proposal for a Regulation on Contestable and Fair Markets in the Digital Sector (Digital Markets Act), SWD(2020) 363 final, Brussels, 15 December 2020, esp. pp. 17-56.
[77] Some legal writers consider that the Digital Markets Act is an extension of Article 102 TFEU and codifies, in a faster and more predictable form, certain principles identified by the traditional law of abuse of a dominant position. See, in particular, Pablo Ibáñez Colomo, « The Draft Digital Markets Act: A Legal and Institutional Analysis« , Journal of European Competition Law & Practice, Vol. 12, No. 7, 2021, pp. 561-575; idem, ‘The (Second) Modernisation of Article 102 TFEU‘, 2023; Nicolas Petit, « The Proposed Digital Markets Act (DMA): A Legal and Policy Review« , Journal of European Competition Law & Practice, Vol. 12, No. 7, 2021, pp. 529-541; idem, Big Tech and the Digital Economy. The Moligopoly Scenario, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, esp. pp. 185-232; Václav Šmejkal, « Abuse of Dominance and the DMA – Differing Objectives or Prevailing Continuity? « , Acta Universitatis Carolinae Iuridica, vol. 69, no. 2, 2023, pp. 33-51. However, this interpretation calls for reservations. Although the DMA, like Article 102 TFEU, pursues an objective of preserving competition, it is based on a legal basis (Art. 114 TFEU), a normative logic and profoundly different mechanisms of intervention. It establishes an ex ante regulatory regime applicable to a category of gatekeepers, regardless of the prior demonstration of an abuse of a dominant position and its anticompetitive effects. To equate the DMA with a mere extension of Article 102 TFEU would lead to the transposition in its interpretation of the categories and evidentiary requirements developed by previous case-law, at the risk of weakening the preventive effectiveness sought by the European legislature. The challenge of the first litigations brought before the General Court and then the Court of Justice will be precisely to determine whether the DMA can develop an autonomous case law, in accordance with its logic of sectoral regulation, or whether it will be gradually reinterpreted in the light of the solutions found under Article 102 TFEU. On the distinction between ex ante regulation and ex post competition law, see the article prior to the entry into force of the DMA by Nicolas Petit, « The Proposed Digital Markets Act (DMA): A Legal and Policy Analysis« , Journal of European Competition Law & Practice, vol. 12, n° 7, 2021, p. 529-541
[78] On the European regulation of network industries and the transition from the logic of a public monopoly to that of a regulated market: Jean-Michel Glachant and Michel Petit, « Régulation économique et concurrence dans les industries de réseau », Revue française d’économie, vol. 18, n° 3, 2004, p. 3-32; Damien Geradin, « Public Services in Europe: Between Competition and Regulation », European Journal of Economic Law, 2005, p. 45-72.
[79] Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act), OJEU L 265, 12 October 2022, in particular Articles 3 and 5 to 7.
[80] François Souty, « Financial Markets and Competition: Transatlantic Geopolitics of Market Data Markets « , op.cit at note 3.
[81] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A, op.cit. in particular pp. 10-18; see also M. Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part B, op.cit.; F. Souty, « The Draghi Report », op.cit.
[82] Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act), OJEU L 265, 12 October 2022, art. 3.
[83] European Commission, « Digital Markets Act: Commission designates six gatekeepers », press release, 6 September 2023, IP/23/4328.
[84] On the notion of essential platform and the evolution of the analysis of digital economic power: Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, op.cit., pp. 21-35.
[85] On the economic approach to the control of digital ecosystems: Nicolas Petit, op.cit., pp. 90-125.
[86] On the first concrete modalities of compliance with the Digital Markets Act, see Google, Oliver Bethell, « Complying with the Digital Markets Act« , Google Europe, 5 March 2024, which presents the changes made to Google Search, Android, consent and data sharing mechanisms, as well as data portability and transparency; European Commission, Digital Markets Act – Annual Report 2024, Brussels, 25 April 2025, spec. § 23-26, relating to gatekeepers‘ compliance reports, compliance workshops held in 2024 and regulatory dialogue with companies and stakeholders. See also European Commission, Digital Markets Act, « Compliance reports » and « Workshops » section.
[87] Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 above, in particular Articles 6 and 7; European Commission, decision of 27 June 2017, case AT.39740 – Google Search (Shopping).
[88] European Commission, « Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act, » press release, March 25, 2024.
[89] On the difficulties of applying ex ante obligations to large platforms: Nicolas Petit, « The Digital Markets Act: A Revolution in Competition Enforcement? », European Competition Journal, vol. 17, 2021, p. 1-20
[90] On the Tension Between Vertical Integration, Innovation, and Competition in Digital Platforms: Herbert Hovenkamp, Federal Antitrust Policy: The Law of Competition and Its Practice, 6th ed., St. Paul: West Academic Publishing, 2020, pp. 280-330.
[91] Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act), op.cit., arts. 29 and 30.
[92] On the question of the effectiveness of sanctions in digital antitrust: Nicolas Petit, Big Tech and the Digital Economy: op.cit., pp. 180-220 ; Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P. Grunes, Big Data and Competition Policy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 140-175.
[93] European Commission, Decision on Alphabet/Google’s compliance with the obligations under Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 (Digital Markets Act), July 2026; European Commission press release, July 2026.
[94] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A: op.cit., especially pp. 10-20.
[95] On the growing role of data as strategic infrastructures for the digital economy and financial markets, see François Souty, « Les données financières (market data) », op.cit. at note 3, 49 p.; see also, on the evolution of the European regulation of financial data: Regulation (EU) 600/2014 (MiFIR), as amended; also European Parliament and Council, Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act), spec. recitals 1 to 11 and 32 to 39; European Commission, Commission Staff Working Document – Impact Assessment accompanying the proposal for a Digital Markets Act, SWD(2020) 363 final, Brussels, 15 Dec. 2020, including developments on network effects, data-related economies of scale and lock-in situations; Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, Competition Policy for the Digital Era, report submitted to the European Commission, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union, 2019, esp. p. 31-67; OECD, Data Access and Sharing to Promote Competition, Paris, OECD Competition Committee, 2021; OECD, The Role of Data in Digital Markets, Paris, 2022. This work converges to show that, in many digital markets, access to data tends to become a determining factor in the contestability of markets, in the same way as access to critical infrastructure in network industries. French Competition Authority, Opinion No. 18-A-03 of 6 March 2018 on the exploitation of data in the Internet advertising sector, Paris, 2018. This opinion is most likely one of the first French texts to have clearly explained that data has become a structuring competitive asset, well before the adoption of the DMA. All of these analyses confirm that the issues raised by financial market data and those brought to light by the proceedings brought against Google are part of a common question: the control of data and information infrastructures has gradually become one of the main determinants of contemporary economic power.
[96] On the comparative evolution of European competition policy and American antitrust, as well as on their geopolitical and digital implications, see FrançoisSouty, « Competition and Antitrust Policy in Europe and the United States: Transatlantic Perspectives and Geopolitical Issues », Le Diplomate Média, 30 December2025, 37 p.; id., « ‘America First Antitrust’: the conservative renewal of American antitrust by the Trump II Administration, continuities, ruptures and doctrinalrecompositions », Le Diplomate Média, 12 January 2026, 25 p.; id., « European Digital Markets Act, competition policy and sovereignty: geopolitical consequencesand strategic impact of the law on the digital economy », Le Diplomate Média, 4 February 2026, 67 p.; id., « Competition law and policy in Europe in 2025: areview of the first year of the von der Leyen II Commission », Le Diplomate Média, 24 March 2026, 66 p. This work extends the author’s previous analyses of thefoundations and developments of American antitrust and European Union competition law.
[97] François Souty, « Les données financières (market data) », op.cit. at note 3, 49 p.See also, on the evolution of European financial data regulation: Regulation (EU) 600/2014 (MiFIR), as amended, as well as the work of the European Commission, the European Securities and Markets Authority and the International Organisation of Securities Commissions on the transparency, access to and marketing of market data.
[98] Federal Trade Commission, Google Inc. FTC File No. 111-0163, decision to terminate the investigation, January 2013; on the comparison with the European action: Nicolas Petit, op.cit., pp. 200-230.
[99] Lina M. Khan, « Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, » Yale Law Journal, Vol. 126, No. 3, 2017, pp. 710-805; Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, New York, Columbia Global Reports, 2018, 154 p.
[100] House Judiciary Committee, Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets: Majority Staff Report and Recommendations, Washington D.C., U.S. House of Representatives, October 2020, 449 p.
[101] United States Department of Justice, United States v. Google LLC, Complaint, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, October 20, 2020.
[102] United States District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. Google LLC, Opinion and Order, August 5, 2024.
[103] Anti-Monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China, adopted on 30 August 2007, entered into force on 1 August 2008; State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), created in 2018 by merger of several administrative economic control authorities.. François Souty and Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, « China: The Chinese Parliament announces the overhaul of the three national competition authorities under the sole authority of a director general of a National Markets Supervision Management Bureau« , 4 April 2018, Concurrences, No. 2-2018, art. no. 87014, p. 212-215.
[104] On the Ant Group case and the Chinese regulatory turn: Martin Chorzempa, The Cashless Revolution: China’s Reinvention of Money and the End of America’s Dominance, New York, PublicAffairs, 2022, p. 180-205. François Souty, « Digital Economy, Competition Policy and Regulation: Comparative Approaches of the European Union, the United States and China », in Linda Arcelin (ed.), op.cit., p. 151-181.
[105] SAMR, Administrative Penalty Decision against Alibaba Group, 10 April 2021; on the application of AML to Chinese digital platforms: Angela Huyue Zhang, Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 150-190.
[106] Data Security Law of the People’s Republic of China, which came into force on 1 September 2021; Personal Information Protection Law, which came into force on 1 November 2021.
[107] On the originality of the Chinese model of competition law and policy and on the link between economic opening, competitive discipline, industrial policy and strategic intervention by the State, see François Souty, « China: The Anti-Monopoly Law of 30 August 2007 », Concurrences, No. 4-2007, p. 158-164; idem, « Chinese Antimonopoly Law – Assessment: The Chinese Competition Authority draws a first assessment of the two years of application of the antimonopoly law », Concurrences, No. 4-2010, p. 235-236. The first article, published at the time of the adoption of the Anti-Monopoly Law of 30 August 2007, analysed the architecture of the new Chinese competition law, its relationship with economic opening and the objectives of strategic control of the economy; the second, published at the end of the first two years of application of the law, drew up an initial institutional and economic assessment. This work was part of a more general reflection on the relationship between competition policy, industrial policy, international openness and state intervention in emerging economies.
[108] Andrew N. Ferguson, « Remarks of Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson at International Competition Network Annual Conference 2025, » Federal Trade Commission, May 7, 2025. This intervention is particularly interesting for your demonstration since it comes from the Chairman of the FTC in the context of the ICN itself and therefore makes it possible to directly confront the American conception of digital competition with the European approach to the DMA. FTC — Remarks of Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson at ICN Annual Conference 2025.
[109] V. François Souty, « The geopolitical limits of the European anti-foreign subsidies regulation », Le Diplomate Média, 21.01.2026, 20 p. To date, extremely few comments on the effectiveness of the FSR have been published.
[110] United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, United States et al. v. Google LLC, No. 20-cv-3010 (D.D.C.), proceedings commenced in 2020 and developments relating to remedies in 2025; United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, United States et al. v. Google LLC, » Ad Tech » case, judgment of April 17, 2025. These proceedings show that the American challenge to the DMA is in no way accompanied by an abandonment of antitrust with regard to large platforms: on the contrary, the United States can seek substantial remedies within the framework of the Sherman Act.
[111] OECD, « Competition and consumer policy in digital markets », OECD Roundtables on Competition Policy Papers, No. 332, OECD Publishing, Paris, 28 May 2026, 46 p. In particular, the paper highlights that traditional analytical frameworks may not fully capture the effects of behaviour in digital environments and examines how competition and consumer protection authorities can cooperate. OECD — Competition and consumer policy in digital markets.
[112] UNCTAD, Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Competition Law and Policy, 23rd session, Geneva, 8-10 July 2026. The Group’s objectives include improving global cooperation in the implementation of competition policies and promoting convergence through dialogue; however, it has no normative function and consensual recommendations remain subject to the decision of individual States. UNCTAD — Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Competition Law and Policy
[113] International Competition Network (ICN), « About — Origins, » official history of the organization. The ICN project has its origins in the work of theInternational Competition Policy Advisory Committee (ICPAC), set up in 1997 at the initiative of the United States; the final report of the ICPAC, published in February 2000, recommended the creation of a « Global Competition Initiative« . » aimed in particular at promoting greater convergence of legislation, analysis and competition culture. American and European officials then supported the project, which led to the creation of the CCM in New York on 25 October 2001 by fourteen jurisdictions, including the United States and the European Union. ICN — About and Origins.
[114] International Competition Network, » About » and » ICN Operations « . The CCM defines itself as an informal and voluntary network of competition authorities; It has no standard-setting function and its recommendations or » best practices » are not binding on the member authorities. Its revised operational framework was adopted on 9 May 2025. This characteristic justifies not overestimating its ability to resolve the substantial divergences between national models. ICN — Operations and Operational Framework.
[115] Andrew N. Ferguson, Remarks of Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson at International Competition Network Annual Conference 2025, Washington D.C., Federal Trade Commission, May 7, 2025. The interest of this reference lies precisely in the fact that the American challenge to certain European guidelines is expressed in one of the international forums designed to promote convergence between competition authorities. FTC — Ferguson, ICN Annual Conference 2025.
[116] OECD, « Competition and consumer policy in digital markets », supra, 28 May 2026; UNCTAD, Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Competition Law and Policy, 23rd session, Geneva, 8-10 July 2026. The OECD dedicated a roundtable in June 2026 to the interaction between competition and consumer protection in digital markets, while UNCTAD continued its work on international cooperation and convergence in July 2026. OECD — Roundtable on Competition and Digital Markets, June 2026 UNCTAD — 23rd Session of the IGE, July 2026.
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