Dusseldorf Google is threatened with requirements from the Federal Cartel Office. The Bonn cartel watchdog determined on the basis of new legal powers in the case of Google for the first time an overriding cross-market importance of an Internet giant, as they announced on Wednesday.
In a second step, the cartel office could now prohibit Google from practices that threaten competition. The office has already taken the first steps in this direction. “We have already started to deal more intensively with the processing of personal data by Google and the subject of the Google News Showcase,” said antitrust chief Andreas Mundt. “At the same time, we are vigorously pursuing further proceedings against Amazon, Apple and Meta, formerly Facebook.”
At the beginning of last year, the legislature gave the Cartel Office new tools. The Cartel Office will then be able to determine a dominant position of companies in the future more easily and intervene to prohibit certain types of behavior. Mundt had announced that the authority could “take action against anticompetitive practices by large digital corporations more quickly and effectively”.