Europe Steps Up Pressure on Tech Giants

Increasingly wary of the growing power of a set of US technology superpowers, European officials are escalating their scrutiny of companies including Facebook, Apple, and Google in realms that span taxation, personal privacy and competition law. Government privacy watchdogs from France, Spain and Italy have in recent weeks joined a group that is investigating Facebook’s privacy controls, officials said, doubling the number of European countries where regulators are analyzing the way Facebook handles the personal information and connections gleaned from more than 300 million users in Europe. At the same time, the European Union’s antitrust regulator in Brussels is examining Apple’s agreements with record labels, as the iPhone maker prepares to launch a subscription music-streaming service that will compete with European players such as Spotify. EU officials are also planning to move forward in a long-running competition probe of Google in coming weeks, a person familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for possible formal charges against the search giant. Google has denied any anticompetitive behavior.

Meanwhile, Amazon and Apple have been named in recent tax investigations. France and Germany are pushing for new rules to regulate big Internet companies. All these fresh moves follow years of probes, regulatory scrutiny and saber-rattling from politicians in Brussels and other European capitals. But the recent pile-on also comes as regulators and government officials in Europe become increasingly emboldened to take on Silicon Valley. In part, European officials say they must protect European industries -- from advertising to automobiles -- from foreign companies they allege don’t play by local rules. But European authorities are also banding together to challenge companies in new ways, including under new interpretations of EU law that haven’t been tried previously.