Massive corporations like Google should not be able to buy their way out of complying with EU law.
The Commission's approval comes despite months of warnings from civil society, journalists, and the film and TV industries that the deal would concentrate an unprecedented share of production, distribution and broadcasting power in the hands of one company, reducing the number of major American studios from four to three.
Without these orders, the 60% of Europeans who use an Android device would be locked into Gemini as their only system level AI assistant, and Google would continue to leverage its overwhelming monopoly over search data to gain an unfair advantage over its competitors in AI development.
This decision is about European sovereignty and democracy as much as competition or bargaining power.
Open Markets Institute has welcomed the European Commission's draft merger guidelines as a major, overdue modernisation of EU competition rules – part of a once-in-a-generation review – while also urging the Commission to close loopholes which risk undermining progress.
The Open Markets Institute Europe welcomes the preliminary decision by the European Commission to designate Amazon and Microsoft as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for their cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
Open Markets Institute and more than 25 civil society organizations are calling on Brussels to reject one of the most sweeping media mergers Europe has been asked to approve.
By deepening concentration in the film and TV industry, the proposed transaction raises significant competition concerns. CMDG and Open Markets Europe call on the EU Commission to investigate the proposed merger.
The UK Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) will require Google to to adhere to new conduct requirements in their use of publisher content for AI Overviews. CMDG was at the forefront of urging the CMA toadopt remedies to level the playing field with publishers in the transition to AI-enabled search.
Big Tech wants Agentic AI to be your gateway to the internet – concentrating market power and reshaping the digital economy.
Policy and advocacy lead Giorgos Verdi argues that the EU’s Tech Sovereignty Package is a promising step toward reducing Europe’s dependence on U.S. technology firms, but warned it will fall short unless Europe also confronts the market concentration that allows Big Tech to dominate AI, cloud, chips, and digital infrastructure.
Max von Thun and Claire Lavin argue that merger guideline progress is undermined by the introduction of a bias for scale and efficiency loopholes, which give large corporations more paths to complete a merger.
Open Markets Europe policy analyst George Colville published a piece condemning an aggressive lobbying strategy mounted by Google and Apple to reframe interoperability mandated by the EU’s Digital Markets Act as threats to user privacy and security.
