The net is slowly closing in on big tech companies

Google, Facebook and others are facing increasing pressures but change needs to come faster, writes Ben Chapman

US competition regulators ordered Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to hand over details on their takeovers of hundreds of smaller firms (Getty)

The net appears to finally be closing in around big tech firms, albeit far too slowly. Google was in court on Wednesday, attempting to overturn the first of three EU fines totalling €8.25bn (£6.92bn) for abusing its dominant position as the internet’s most important gatekeeper.

Meanwhile, US competition regulators ordered Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to hand over details on their takeovers of hundreds of smaller firms over the past decade.

The Federal Trade Commission wants to know if big tech has been buying up small tech in order to snuff out any competition before it poses a threat. There are almost certainly plenty of examples of exactly this happening, the question is whether it broke anti-trust law or not.

Also this week, the UK government said Ofcom would get new powers to crack down on social media companies that do not protect users from harmful content.

The telecoms regulator will now be Britain’s first de facto internet watchdog, a move that seems long overdue.

As does Google facing up to its breaches of the rules in Europe. The case now being heard in EU courts is the latest round of a decade-long battle with Europe’s competition enforcers. It centres around how the tech giant prioritises results from its shopping comparison service ahead of those from other companies.

Google has similarly been found to have broken competition rules with its Android operating system and in the online ad market.

For its part, Google says the EU’s fine is “wrong on the law, the facts and the economics”. We’ll see.

Dozens of other court cases await Google and the other tech giants on a range of issues which are indicative of a wider clampdown on big tech.

This is welcome but also serves to highlight how flat-footed lawmakers across the world have been to the enormous changes – both good and bad – that the online world ushered in.

In the time since dial-up modems started becoming commonplace in our homes, a generation has been born, educated, launched careers and started spawning the next generation. Yet still many of the battles about the shape of the online world are being fought with laws designed for an analogue age.

Since it was founded in 1998, Google has grown to be one of the world’s biggest companies largely through brilliant products but in part by taking advantage of a set of rules that leaves plenty of room for exploitation.

Currently, tech firms are legally allowed to hoover up untold amounts of users’ personal data, shift billions of pounds in profits away in Bermuda, disseminate extreme material and profit from the spread of fake news – including political adverts containing outright lies.

There are steady steps towards fairer taxes on digital companies and tentative moves to bring in controls on online advertising, but the pace and intensity needs to step up several notches.

There is broad support from voters across the political spectrum for greater controls on the dominant digital companies. But as the tech giants’ problems multiply so do the teams of lobbyists and spin doctors employed to fight them.

Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg now heads up a legion of at least 700 people in Facebook’s public affairs team. That is vast by any company’s standards and represents a hefty chunk of Facebook’s global workforce of 45,000.

Last year, Facebook, Amazon and Apple all increased their spend on lobbying to influence Washington’s notoriously money-driven political agenda. Google’s outlay fell after a record lobbying bill in 2018.

Politicians and regulators in the US and beyond need to stand firm in the face of this wall of cash and implement the change that voters – not lobbyists – are calling for.