The European Union’s outgoing competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, made a name for herself with headline-grabbing enforcements against Big Tech. But in a New York Times exit interview, as she approaches the end of her term, she sounds regretful at not having gone faster and harder against the likes of Apple and Google. She summarized her decade-long tenure as only “partly successful.”
A handful of major platforms still dominate the online consumer experience, despite billions in fines from Vestager’s office. So it would be difficult to conclude anything else, although the full impact of EU regulations like the Digital Markets Act, which she helped introduce, won’t be felt for years. So her legacy may need longer to assess.
Still, her regret is telling. And — via remarks on the incoming Trump administration — the interview conveys a sense of a window of opportunity to reset the rules of the web being lost. Her advice to regulators everywhere now? Be “bolder.”
“We are in the business of deterrence,” she added in relation to the DOJ’s proposal to break up Google. “If we do not once in a while use our most powerful tools, there’s no deterrence.”
