(Bloomberg) — A potential split of Google’s business is still under consideration, according to Teresa Ribera, the European Union’s new competition chief, who also pledged to build bridges with incoming US President Donald Trump.
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Ribera, a Spanish socialist who started her five-year term this week, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that divestments — touted by her predecessor Margrethe Vestager and the US Department of Justice for the Alphabet Inc. unit — are one way of preventing Big Tech firms grabbing too much market power.
“It’s something that is of course on the table, and we try to work together with other relevant competition authorities worldwide, including the US competition authorities,” she said. ‘It is important to take into consideration this potential division, divestment of some of these businesses. We will be assessing case-by-case.” She said that she would aim to build on the “legacy” of Vestager, who was a thorn in the side of Silicon Valley during her tenure.
Vestager pitched a potential breakup of Google’s adtech arm to address its dominance on digital advertising, while the US has urged broader divestments including the forced sale of the company’s Chrome browser to address its alleged stranglehold on online search.
Ribera has one of the most powerful roles in President Ursula von der Leyen’s second five-year term, and is also responsible for overseeing the EU’s landmark green deal at a time when the threat of de-industrialization on the continent looms large. One of her early challenges will be dealing with Trump, who has repeatedly accused Europe of treating the US badly and threatened a trade war, large EU penalties on US tech firms may be seen as another provocation that merits a strong response.
“I will try” for “a cooperative, real relationship” with the Trump administration, she said, noting how the President-elect has selected Irish-born Gail Slater, an Oxford-educated economic policy adviser to Vice President-elect JD Vance, to head up antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department.
Another challenge for Ribera is the economic threat posed by China, as EU nations struggle to match the scale of subsidies and tax breaks for EVs and other green technologies.
She said she aims to make full use of the EU’s freshly minted Foreign Subsidies Regulation, which aims to rein in competition distortions to the bloc’s own market caused by foreign firms backed by lavish state handouts.
