Germany Alleges Google Breached Digital-Competition Law

Germany’s competition regulator has said that Google should give users more control over how and whether it uses data from its various services. This includes its search engine and YouTube. This is part of a new wave of regulatory enforcement in Europe against big tech companies.

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The German Federal Cartel Office has preliminarily concluded that Google is violating a new digital-competition law, and expects to order the company to give users more specific and clear control over the extent to which their data is combined from various services.
The regulator has said that it will now be seeking responses from Google in regards to its preliminary assessment. This assessment could be subject to change before the regulator issues a final decision later on this year.

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Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., is a multinational technology company that specializes in internet-related services and products. Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The company has a wide range of products and services, including search, cloud computing, advertising, maps, software, and hardware. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

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Google said it would "continue to engage constructively" with the German regulator to resolve its concerns.

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Germany's recent action against big tech companies is a sign of things to come for these companies in the European Union. The EU is currently implementing its own digital-competition law, called the Digital Markets Act, which includes similar requirements for the biggest tech companies operating in Europe. These companies, dubbed "gatekeepers," are expected to include Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta Platforms, and others. The provisions of the Digital Markets Act will be enforced beginning in 2024.

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The EU has put into place similar provisions as the German law, in order to help smaller companies compete with digital giants. One of these provisions would, in a similar way to the German law, require large tech companies to silo data from their different core services unless they have user authorization to combine this data.
Germany is taking a tough stance on Wednesday's allegations, flexing its muscles under national law. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, is still in talks with big tech companies about how to enforce its DMA. Germany has also previously opened investigations under its new law into several companies, including Amazon and Meta Platforms Inc.

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Amazon and Meta have both declined to comment on the ongoing investigation by the German competition regulator. Amazon has said that it is cooperating with the regulator.

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The existence of two sets of laws raises the possibility of overlapping and potentially conflicting enforcement priorities between Germany and the EU—a headache for tech companies.

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On Wednesday, Germany’s Cartel Office said that its law on data sharing goes further than the EU’s Data Protection Directive (DPD) in how it requires companies to offer users options on how their data is shared internally. This suggests that the Cartel Office could eventually order a different set of options for users in Germany than for the EU as a whole.