EU's antitrust war on Google and Facebook uses abandoned American playbook

Both - as well as their incredible innovations - are the products not of monopoly but of competition

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that European antitrust regulators have declared war on American tech giants.

On June 27, the European Union imposed a €2.4 billion (US$2.75 billion) fine on Google for giving favorable treatment in its search engine results to its own comparison shopping service. And Germany’s antitrust enforcer is investigating Facebook for asking users to sign away control over personal information.

In contrast, American antitrust enforcers have shown little interest in these companies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did open an investigation into whether Google has a search bias, but closed