Not really, antitrust is far from being a new concept. It predates all the major tech companies. In fact, a cursory web search traces it back all the way to the Roman empire. and Google is definitely not the first to be hit by it.
However, if Google (or any major US tech company) believe they are being wrongfully targeted, they can always stop operating in EU.
Or you know, they can continue operating there, but follow the rules instead. Again, a very weird concept. Not sure you will understand it.
My argument is that the law in question is an EU economic policy targeting large US companies, not "justice" in the "law & order" sense of that word. This is a real position, not a straw man.
In return I've gotten mostly insulting responses (though some thoughtful ones have now filtered in). I'm not even complaining about any of these, mostly just curious why this topic riles so many people up.
In my reply I used some light sarcasm to convey my dismay at how wrong your original post was. If you read that as hostility or "heavy emotional reaction", well, that is a you problem.
We can refer back to your original post:
> The law here isn't some neutral concept of justice, but rather a regulation tailor-made by unelected officials to target large US companies.
1 - It ignores that antitrust law is a concept of justice, created to protect society against economic abuse that would otherwise harm it.
2 - It uses an old, boring, and plain wrong rhetoric about "unelected EU officials". Sorry, this is plain bullshit.
3 - It has a subtext of "poor US big tech company being unfairly targeted by mean EU government". Again, another boring and plain wrong rhetoric. Companies like Google are horribly abusive both to users and to the societies where they operate. I wouldn't be surprised if Google willingly ignored untitrust law in a cold calculation where they figured they make more in revenue then they lose in fines.
This is a wholly new concept of "antitrust" law which relies on market competition rather than consumer harm.
There is no overlap with prior antitrust except for the name and "big = bad". Even your point 3 exposes the real problem. People don't like google (neither do I, actually), impute ill intent to them, and want them punished.
My entire point has been that this is an EU economic policy, not traditional "justice" (e.g. punishment for robbery).
Doing some light googling, the basis of these antitrust laws is from "Regulation No 17: First Regulation implementing Articles 85 and 86 of the Treaty" [1]
Article 86 of the Treaty begins, "In order to combat crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union"[2]...
This is where it gets complex, buddy, but hang with me..."financial interests" is another way of saying "economic interests", so the EU itself explicitly calls this an economic policy.
And why wouldn't they? They can and should protect their interests. So why are ou are all over the place trying to shut down conversations about them doing so?
However, if Google (or any major US tech company) believe they are being wrongfully targeted, they can always stop operating in EU.
Or you know, they can continue operating there, but follow the rules instead. Again, a very weird concept. Not sure you will understand it.