The EU unveils its plan to rein in big tech

A YEAR AGO Europe was being hailed as a regulatory superpower in technology. Countries around the world copied its strict new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), while America’s government scarcely tried to exercise any control over a fast-moving industry. The positions have since been reversed. This autumn the European Court of Justice overturned an order from Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief, for Apple to pay back 14bn of taxes to Ireland. It was a big setback for the bloc's strategy to regulate big tech. And America has found new purpose. In October Congress published a lengthy report on how to update competition law. The same month the Department of Justice launched a lawsuit against Google over alleged abuses of its monopoly in search advertising. And in December the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states sued Facebook over anticompetitive practices in social-networking.