Financial TimesFinancial Times

How Germany became Europe’s leading Big Tech trust buster

By Javier Espinoza

11 Jan 2023 · 8 min read

Editor's Note

Germany is already tightening the noose around Big Tech platforms such as Amazon, Meta, Google to protect smaller businesses. The FT analyzes the impact of this on Europe's regulatory arms race.

As an entrepreneur, Patrick Andrae wants things done quickly. So the co-founder and chief executive of Berlin-based holiday rental firm HomeToGo is frustrated at how slowly antitrust rules take to open up markets and enable competition to flourish in Europe.

HomeToGo relies heavily on traffic searches from Google to boost revenues. Since 2019 the company and others in the sector have been openly fighting the search group for allegedly unfairly promoting its own services at the expense of rivals. Google has denied wrongdoing and says that it gives users the most relevant results.

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