Hello. Hello.

It's a pleasure to have you here.

It's my pleasure to be here.

So, in the American press, you've been hailed as a hero.

I'm gonna read a couple headlines.

The Eurocrat Who Makes Corporate America Tremble,

The Woman Who is Reigning in America's Technology Giants.

So, let's start,

and tell me why these technology giants

who've created these products we use all the time,

why do they need to be reigned in?

Well, they don't, of course, as such.

We're only dealing with companies

who break European competition law

because my task is to make sure

that consumers are not harmed, that they can enjoy choice,

affordable prices, innovation in the marketplace.

Well, you have...

You are the one regulator in the world

who has actually brought multiple enforcement actions

against the major technology companies,

against Apple for their taxes,

you've just announced several investigations into Google.

What is it that you are trying to change about them?

Well, one of the things

one shouldn't misunderstand about Europe

is that you're more than welcome to be successful.

We don't look at your flag, we look at what you bring,

and if what you bring to the marketplace

is something that people like, you're more than welcome.

But the thing is that with success also comes responsibility

because obviously, if you hold 90% of the marketplace,

the two next competitors, well, they are the smaller guy.

So, you cannot misuse your sort of dominance,

your dominant position in the marketplace,

and this has been the issue here in the two Google cases,

that we have seen a misuse of success

to deny others the chance to compete against you.

So, your view isn't so much that there is something

fundamentally wrong with the way tech has become structured,

the way the tech industry work right now,

it's more there are specific cases of specific violators

against specific European laws?

Well, and then at the same time,

I work very closely with colleagues

who have the responsibility

of regulating the economy as we see it

because these are formative years.

We're in a revolutionary states, things are changing,

they're changing fast.

Now we form not only the next economy,

but also the next society,

and this is why what I do sort of complements

what colleagues do in order to secure privacy,

that you own your data,

that you have the right portability

to take them from one provider to the next,

but also colleagues to say, well,

we need transparency in these new business relations

because you have the giants and then you have the small guy

who's doing business via the giants.

This, actually, that's a very interesting answer

which gets at a little bit of my previous question

which is if you saw an equal problem in competition and,

say, pharmaceuticals and one in technology,

you would feel more of an obligation to

try to fix the competition problem in the tech industry

because it will play such an important role in the future?

Well, we have made anything

that has to do with data and digitalization

one of our priorities

exactly because of these sort of formative forces

because if you look at pharma,

we've had a number of pharma cases,

we still have ongoing pharma cases,

pay for delay cases

where the generics doesn't reach the marketplace,

excessive pricing cases that are still open,

but here were have the regulation in place.

We have a lot of regulation

to make sure that drugs are safe, that they are tested,

that they have responsibility.

We know how that works.

It's already sort of a controlled marketplace, so to speak.

Go compete, but within this framework.

When it comes to sort of the digital side of the economy,

it is still much more fluid,

and this is why sort of these formative years

become so important for us as citizens

and as customers to enjoy the full benefits

of a completely new economy and use ways of doing business.

So, I understand that.

So, I understand that these are formative years,

these are hugely important industries.

Do you also feel like there is something structurally broken

in the technology industry

that requires you to weigh in a little more heavily

on that industry than you would others?

Well, that's difficult to answer.

I think maybe you can say that something is structurally,

newly created because the number of of old business models,

they are broken.

They are suffering,

they are trying to make their business viable

in a new economy,

but the thing is that when you have economies of scale

to this degree because network effects,

marginal costs approaching zero,

there are new ways of doing business

that we have to understand in full, both data as a resource,

as an input, as the starting point for all innovation,

as a barrier to entry.

This we have to understand, not because something is broken,

but because something new is being created.

Well, two of those things you just mentioned,

marginal costs approaching zero and network effects,

can lead to monopoly situations,

which would suggest

maybe there's not something structurally broken,

but a structural imperative for a regulator to weigh in.

So, a lot has changed in the tech industry in the last year.

You've seen the tech executives making apologies,

coming before Congress.

You've seen them changing their products

to deal with addiction.

Do you feel like the tech industry,

and by that I mean the American giants,

do you feel like they're doing better now

than they were a year ago for consumers?

Well, I think it's very difficult to talk about them

as one because they are different.

They have different cultures, they have different aims,

they're also doing differently.

For instance, we've had an Amazon case that we settled

about innovation in ebooks

because Amazon had taken something

sort of very restrictive contractual clauses

not to allow other people to have full benefit

of new innovations.

So, that we settled,

and we worked very closely with Amazon in order to do that.

Then we had the Google cases where it didn't succeed

for my predecessor to settle it,

which would have solved the case much more quickly

than we've been able to do.

So, there's a lot of differences here.

It's not the same thing.

Okay, so, do you think that the US regulators

will start being more active in the future?

From what we've seen in the last year,

they do seem to be doing more,

they are calling people to Capitol Hill,

but it also still seems like the only person

actually bringing actions is you.

Do you think you'll be less alone in the pools?

(chuckles) Well, of course, that remains to be seen

because there are differences between the US market

and the European market.

We've had a lot of very active complainants

because the European market is very attractive, obviously.

So, of course it's difficult to say,

but of course we're trying to inspire.

So, you're hoping to inspire.

That makes a lot of sense.

Let me ask about something that

is gonna make your job a little more complicated,

which is artificial intelligence.

So, a lot of the decisions

that the major tech companies make

will be based on AI algorithms.

In fact, often on AI algorithms that they don't understand.

Amazon won't know exactly why something is being recommended

or why its product works the way it will.

Does that make your job harder?

Well, of course it's challenging.

So, it sort of asks a number of questions back to us.

What will we demand from companies

doing business with algorithms,

that they should remember to send them to law school

before they let them loose

so that they know, well, how do I compete?

If there is an algorithm where they say, oh,

their tuition fee is way too high.

We'll just try to make do with whatever rule of thumb

that we give them,

that maybe we should have our own algorithms out there

to police some of the market if we get a concern.

So, what courses should the algorithms take in law school?

Competition Policy. Competition Law.

That's a first, that's the basics.

(laughs) So, I work at a major tech company,

and I say, look, we've added our algorithms,

we made sure that there would be no violations

of competition law, discrimination law, all of these things,

but we still don't know what exactly they did.

Is that okay with you?

Well, it's your algorithm, so it's your responsibility.

So, you're responsible for the outcome.

Yes. Okay,

and do you think...

How will you, as somebody who researches this,

how will you learn and understand exactly

how they're working?

Well, I think, to some degree,

that's still what we're trying to figure out.

We have placed a study with insightful people to say, well,

how can we use algorithms in order to understand, in full,

what is going on.

I have three special advisors that have had tasked, one in,

very knowledgeable in economics, one in competition law,

one in tech, to say, well,

do we need new tools in order to be able

to enforce competition law when things aren't changing?

And, of course, we have asked stakeholders

because this can never ever be our way of thinking.

You need to interact with people,

and this is why we've asked people to come to us

to give us their opinion.

And what is your framework

for how competition law should work

and what it should prioritize?

Right, in the United States,

antitrust policy is basically based on consumer harm, right?

It's based on pricing,

and your approach has been much broader.

That weighs into it

and general amount of competition weighs into it.

It seems like data collection,

perhaps even labor rights,

play into your philosophy of competition law.

What are the different elements and how much do they matter?

Well, now, labor law doesn't come into what we do.

Of course labor law means lots to us as Europeans,

that you have a fair bargain, but this is not for me.

This is for others because we try to, you know,

keep sort of a focus on exactly consumer harm,

but we have a view of that to be, of course,

prices because for many many people,

of course prices are important.

You may not have that much of a budget, but second,

you still want choice.

One thing is that it is a bargain,

but if it's only in black, not much color there, and third,

but definitely not as a minor thing,

you would want innovation.

You would want new things to happen in the market,

and you see the car cartel investigation

that we just opened.

It's not about price fixing,

it's not about you take the northern part of the market,

I take the southern part of the market.

It's about holding back on innovation.

We have this concern that they may have agreed

to not use the best possible technology,

not to challenge one another

to innovate on emissions

to make sure that we have cleaner cars.

But in those...

So, in all of those different categories, on pricing,

you can't really fault the tech companies

'cause the prices are quite low.

On consumer harm you can certainly fault them

for violating privacy.

The most interesting one to me, though,

is innovation because it's hard to say

that Google hasn't been massively innovative in 1,000 ways.

It's hard to say that Amazon, Facebook, Apple,

many of the companies you've taken a very close look at

are not innovative companies.

Is the idea that with more competition

they would be more innovative?

Oh, well, innovation,

competition is one of the most important drivers

to innovation.

What we see in the androids case is a decade ago,

smartphoness was just about to take off.

Google realized that oh, wow,

desktop search will be a thing of the past,

at least it will shrink, search on the go,

mobiles search, that is the future.

So, what we find in our casework

is that they bought androids, excellent open source,

the code is available.

But the thing is that for a phones manufacturer,

you need the Play store because without the Play store,

people cannot get any apps.

Then Google said okay, fine,

you can have the Play store

if you take Chrome and Search as well.

And second, we will pay you exclusively

to install Chrome and Search, Google Search.

And thirdly, if you do anything else,

you will lose all the payments

and you cannot use our products anymore.

So, they sort of tied in androids

for no one else to be able to innovate on the code,

for no one else to be able to say to a phones manufacturer

would you carry my new search app?

Would you carry my new browser

in order for me to present my product to consumers?

That couldn't happen.

And if you cannot get to the consumer,

you cannot invest in innovation.

Right, and so, it's created this fascinating case

where Google builds androids,

this fabulously innovative thing

that they spend billions of dollars building,

and then they give it away for free.

How could one criticize them for that?

But it's the layer on top of that where you say

they use their market power. Oh, yes.

We would never criticize the business model.

This is not a decision on the business model,

this is a decision about what comes on top of that

because open source, that's great.

I think anyone would agree on that,

but the things is that if open source is being controlled

by what you put on top of it, well then basically,

you sort of say, well,

this were to be the most sort of innovative starting point,

it has turned out to be the opposite.

Right, let's talk about some specific cases.

I wanna ask you about some things

that are in the news this week.

So, the first is, I don't know if you saw it,

but Brian Acton, the one of the founders of WhatsApp,

gave an interview today,

and he explains after the acquisition,

after Facebook acquired WhatsApp,

he describes a meeting with European regulators.

And he says I was coached to explain

that it would be really difficult to merge or blend data

from the two systems.

So, he's saying that Facebook coached him to say

that you could not merge WhatsApp and Facebook data

as a way to help get the acquisition through.

How do you respond to that?

Well, that, exactly that question was answered

with a fine of 110 million euros.

But to know not only that

they did the things that you would fine them for,

but one of the people feels

that he was coached to lie to you.

Well, I think the wording of our decision

is not as explicit as that,

but it was solved exactly for this being the case,

that they told us that something wasn't possible

and then it turned out that it was indeed possible.

But the good thing for Facebook in that situation

was that even though we were told that this is not possible,

we tested the hypothesis anyway to say if it were possible,

would it then be a very serious concern on our side?

And it turned out that if it were to be possible,

it would be a great concern.

And that was very important

because had it been a great concern,

of course the entire merger would have been at risk.

Yeah, so is that a situation you find yourself in often

where people from the tech companies say

that's not possible, that can't be done.

We know the code, you don't know the code, trust us.

No, not very often.

We have been doing a number of procedural cases

to say to people, you know,

we work with you in order for us to be able to do our job,

and we want to be quick and lean and open with you.

You need to give us correct information and full

because otherwise we cannot do our job,

and this is why both we have this Facebook case

and why we had a number of other cases

where people had not been open with us and transparent.

To say, well,

this is the only way that we can make this happen.

Let's talk about another case,

which is right before arriving in the United States,

you announced that you were investigating Amazon

and Amazon's marketplace.

Explain what that is about.

Well, it is the very very early days,

and it's important for me to say

that we have not opened an investigation.

We have no decision, but we are,

we're getting interested

because we made a sector inquiry of e-commerce,

and this was one of the things that came back to us.

We heard from more people they worry.

This dual role of Amazon.

One the one had side, you host the little guy,

you enable him to do e-commerce

because you provide him with the logistics

of being able to do e-commerce,

which is great because a lot of small businesses, for them,

it is quite a step to be able to do e-commerce.

So, everything is fine.

The thing is that when you do that,

you get a lot of data

from all the little guys that you host,

and part of that, of course,

you're used to make your services to the little guy better,

always fine.

But the thing is that if you also use that data to say,

well, oh you little guys, I see there is a trend here.

So, now I will do your business,

and since I have large scale,

I can do that much cheaper than you can do.

And if that was to be the case,

of course we would like to understand

if that would be a competition violation.

But explain the line that they have to cross, right?

So, if they collect data...

They have to, as you say,

they have to collect lots of data to help the little guys,

to help the little guys reach customers.

That's why the little guys are on this fabulous platform.

If there are 1,000 little guys in 1,000 industries

and Amazon looks at all the data and then,

partly because of that data,

it makes a decision to enter one of those industries,

is that a problem?

Or is it if they take out all 1,000

based on that data? That remains to be seen.

That's what we are analyzing.

This is why we're asking questions

because it's definitely not a given because, as said,

price is part of what we're looking at

and we know that for many people,

price is a very important issue.

Many people, they don't have a budget of large sums.

They really really appreciate efficiencies

that allow business to give you lower prices.

So, we have to balance things out and the thing, of course,

our starting point, is the fact that Amazon has become big.

Because it's not that you're big in itself that's a problem,

but if you misuse your size to do something

that a smaller guy couldn't do or makes it very difficult

for the smaller guy to compete against you,

then we take an issue.

But, as said, these are very early days.

So, the process from here will be you'll investigate,

you'll look, you'll see how many industries they went into,

you'll see how much a role the data from the little guys

played in the decision to go into those industries,

you'll see whether they undercut them on prices deliberately

based on the information asymmetries.

Is that a fair way to look at it?

Well, I don't think that you can say that, well,

this is the exclusive list of things that we will look at,

but this is the kind of thing

of where we're taking interest.

What is actually happening in these markets

that has these sort of dual role,

where on the one hand side, you host,

but on the other hand side,

you're also yourself in this market.

And what are the dynamics when data is sort of,

what enables things to happen?

Let me ask you another thing in the news.

Systrom and Mike Krieger, the founders of Instagram,

just resigned on Monday night,

or they said they were leaving.

Do you think that Facebook should have not been allowed

to acquire Instagram given how similar they are?

Oh, that I cannot judge sort of in

(mumbling) in the back mirror, no.

What is your instinct?

I don't know. Mhm.

What would you have looked at

if you had been in the role you have now?

Oh, well, you know,

one of the many things I have learned in my career

is that if there is a number of ifs on top of one another,

one shouldn't speculate.

We're on my third if right now in the train,

(laughing) so I understand.

Let me move to a more specific one

which is in the United States,

the biggest conversation in tech

has been about misinformation.

Do you think that is, in some ways, a competition problem?

Do you think that if Facebook had more competitors,

if Facebook and Twitter had more competitors,

there would be potentially less misinformation,

or are they totally separate?

That's a tricky one.

Of course it would be more difficult

sort of to target many people because, well,

I think that we have been lying

since humans learned to speak.

We've been manipulating each other

all the way through history, but the new thing is,

of course, the scope and the speed.

It is so fast and you reach so many people very easily,

and in that respect, of course, if you had more outlets,

if people had more different social networks

that may connect, may not connect,

of course people would not be sort of in the same ecosystem,

and that could be a good thing.

And I think for anyone,

that's not a question of competition law.

If it was your business that has been misused

to rig an election,

wouldn't you find that to be devastating?

Well, yes, and that would lead one

to the possible counterargument

that because there really are a very small number

of platforms which are distributing misinformation

because they now all take is seriously,

they can solve it seriously and they can hire 10,000 people

and they can put their best product people on this problem,

whereas if you had 15 social networks,

perhaps it would be harder for all of them

to counter misinformation.

But the thing is that of course there's something

that they have to do as a platform

because you have a responsibility, but we as citizen,

we also have to develop our skills

because we have to figure out if something that we hear

is too good to be true probably is not true,

but on the other hand side, if things are very bad,

maybe it's no bad either.

And I think to develop these skills,

one of the good things

is that we have diversity in our media,

that we are being approached from different points of view

with different ways of angling a story

in order for us to see, well,

you get a part of the story there

and another part of the story there.

You cannot rely on anyone to tell you the full truth.

You have to be able to make up your mind yourself.

Let me ask you the same question

with a different issue, privacy.

Do you think that privacy is, in some ways,

a competition issue?

If there was more competition,

would we have stricter privacy?

Well, at least to some degree,

you can say that it may have been.

The German Bundeskartellamt,

their National Competition Authority,

they've been looking into this area

between privacy and competition law

because they have the suspicion

that Facebook being dominant in some areas,

they have said to people it's a take it or leave it.

Either you take this privacy condition,

these terms and conditions, or you cannot use it,

terms and conditions that didn't live up to

German competition law, or to German privacy law.

So, I wouldn't exclude that it can ever happen,

but it's not directly linked.

It's like two things that you have to live up to

at the same time, privacy rules that you own your data,

that you can move from one platform to another

with your data, that you have the right to be forgotten.

And, of course, at the same time,

you have to live up to competition law issues.

Right, though I would suspect that

were there more competition,

they would be fighting for users.

And one way to get more users to trust you more

is to offer better privacy protections.

Well, I think that's a good point

that we need the market to help us enforce our rights

when it comes to privacy because the marketplace

is a great place for things to say, well,

I can offer you better protection of your privacy

because I have designed my service

with privacy as the starting point,

or I will offer you an independent digital assistant

to make sure that your settings

are exactly as you wanted to do

because your digital assistant will get through

the terms and conditions,

and they will read the 20 pages in (clicks teeth)

a split second.

That would be marvelous

when that products exists. Wouldn't that be great?

One of the things that interests me the most right now

is the dynamic between Western technology companies

and Chinese technology companies,

and clearly both are growing very quickly.

Have you ever brought an action or an investigation

into a Chinese technology company?

No, because their presence in Europe

is still very limited.

And do you think that is possibly going to change

as they continue to grow and expand?

Well, it depends very much of the European consumer.

If their product is liked and they grow,

of course there may be issues.

If not, well, that's another matter.

So, there's an argument that a lot of people

in the Western technology companies are making,

and you've heard Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt

make variations on this argument

which is that the world is splitting into two spheres.

There's the Chinese technology sphere

and there's the American technology sphere,

and what's happening is that, in part,

because the US technology sphere

is being regulated so harshly

both through the questions of the United States government,

through your actions,

that the US technology sphere is gonna be held back,

and China, where the companies care about privacy,

but they care relatively less about privacy

than the American companies, will surge ahead.

And so, regulation will pull the Western tech companies back

while the Chinese tech companies move ahead.

How do you respond to that?

Well, where we have democracies,

we have ways of deciding things,

we form our societies not to help tech companies,

but to form societies.

And this is, I think for us, this is a very important point,

that technology is serving us as citizens, as consumers,

and this is why we regulate,

not because we want to hold anyone down,

but because we want our societies to work.

And do you have any worry...

I mean, you've talked about the power that these devices

and these products have and helping democracy

and helping the way we communicate

and helping an open society and a civil society.

Do you have any fears that if the tools of the future

are made by Chinese companies

and outside of the regulatory reach of,

more outside of the regulatory reach

of American and Western regulators,

that it'll be a problem for democracy?

Well, the way that we have made our legislation is that

if you wanna be present in Europe,

then you play by the European rulebook.

That's the important thing for us,

and that goes for everyone because, for us,

it's not important what flag you're flying

or how you're owned.

What is important is what you do on ground

with European consumers,

if you respect our rules or if you don't.

Why do you think that most of the largest tech companies

have come from Silicon Valley, Washington,

from the United States and from China, but not from Europe?

Well, I think an amazing ecosystem was created,

a thing of skills, social innovation, and capital.

Sort of a lot of different competencies coming together,

creating amazing products, as you said,

innovation beyond belief,

and that has been received very very well.

And then, of course,

if you have amazing products that people like,

then you grow.

You regulate a lot of different industries.

What are the people from the tech industry like

when you're sitting across the table from them?

Are the lobbyists softer, are they...

Do they bully more?

What are they like compared to

working with other industries?

I don't sense a difference.

They're different people,

but they're also different CEOs if you do cement,

if you do telco, if you do beers.

They're all very different people.

What I can sense is more

if you come with a sort of consolidation in mind

or if you come with competition in mind,

and that has nothing to do with tech or no tech.

So, the last question,

what do you think will happen

or what do you hope will happen over the next couple years

with the tech giants in the tech industry?

Are there trends you're seeing now

that you hope will accelerate?

Well, I hope that businesses will work more together,

but also be present in different marketplaces.

US companies in Europe,

European companies in the US and in many more markets

because I think we need the diversity

for businesses to compete, to innovate,

so that we get the best of technology both as consumers,

but also as citizens.

Great, alright.

Thank you very much, Commissioner Vestager.

It was my pleasure. That was a wonderful

note to end on. Thank you.