The absence of an effective remedy in Europe’s seminal Google Shopping case nearly three years since the decision reveals much about the limits of antitrust laws and the need for a new frontier in tech regulation.
While the European Commission and Google fight it out on appeal over whether the company violated antitrust laws by using Google Search to promote its own comparison shopping service, a debate outside the courtroom focuses on the appropriate remedy in the case. The relief to date is not working the way it was expected to, raising serious questions about the underlying theory of the case and the limits of competition laws. Much is at stake as the rest of the world watches to see whether Europe’s quagmire means that antitrust laws need to be pushed further in order to deal with digital platforms, or if their limits reveal the need for new forms of tech regulation.
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