Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union.
EU and US antitrust regulators may have gone their separate ways of late. But they can still agree on one thing: The era of Google’s dominance in advertising technology must end. The commission last week joined the US in touting a breakup as a viable remedy for the California-based tech giant’s alleged monopoly abuses. A selloff order would strike at the heart of one of Google’s biggest money spinners — although it could still be years away due to the legal processes that have to play out. The EU and US antitrust cases focus on a lucrative segment of the company’s business that involves facilitating the placement of ads on other websites. Meanwhile, in Germany, Google risks a ban on the way it bundles together navigation and other services to potentially thwart competition for in-car technology.
