The Danish Liberal Socialist Politician Who Accused Google of Antitrust Violations

[They Don't Like Islamists Either]

Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition
commissioner, announced on Wednesday that she was bringing
formal antitrust charges against Google. A longtime Danish
politician, she has brought an assertive approach to Europe’s
competition ministry since taking over late last year. She also
may be the only regulator in Brussels known for knitting
elephants.

Here is a look at the woman at the center of the ambitious
antitrust case.

Who is she?

Ms. Vestager, 47, began her career as a civil servant, and has
also served as a member of the Danish Parliament and in a number
of government posts, including education minister, economy
minister and deputy prime minister. She is known for a no-
nonsense demeanor and has taken some tough stances, which
included supporting cost cuts that trimmed early retirement and
other benefits for Danes. She has an economics degree from the
University of Copenhagen and three daughters. Her husband is a
high-school level math teacher.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt. The two most prominent Danish
politicians on the world stage at the moment happen to be women.
Ms. Thorning-Schmidt is the prime minister and leads the Social
Democratic Party. Ms. Vestager, who previously served as Ms.
Thorning-Schmidt’s deputy prime minister, leads the Social
Liberal Party. The two center-left parties are partners in
Denmark’s coalition government.

What did she just do?

Jump-started an antitrust case against Google that has been
inching along for five years. Her predecessor, Joaquín Almunia,
tried and failed to reach a settlement three times with Google.
Ms. Vestager has taken a more aggressive approach and has
appeared not to have much appetite for a fourth round of
settlement talks.

She once said that the “amount of data controlled by Google
gives rise to a series of societal challenges.” But she also
uses Google like just about everyone else. “My kids or myself
never consider for a minute that this is a U.S. company or a
European company; the reason why we use it is that Google has
very good products,” she said in a news conference on Wednesday.

She has accused Google of using its dominance as a search engine
to “artificially” skew results that favor its own shopping
service, to the detriment of rivals. “Dominant companies have a
responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by
restricting competition either in the market where they are
dominant or in neighboring markets.”

She also announced that investigations would continue in other
areas, including accusations that Google improperly uses its
rivals’ content and locks out advertising competition with
exclusivity deals. And she opened a formal investigation related
to the company’s Android operating system for cellphones.

Bid on her elephant?

Ms. Vestager is known for knitting, particularly elephants, in
staff meetings. When she took her job in Brussels last year, she
left her successor as Danish economy minister a hand-knit
elephant, and this message: “I have knitted a friend for you.
It’s an elephant. Elephants are social, insightful animals. They
live in communities — and I have to say it — they live in
matriarchal societies. They bear no grudge, but they remember
well.”

This week, she is traveling to Washington to participate in a
conference hosted by the American Bar Association. Then, on
Sunday, she will be speaking at the Danish Seamen’s Church in
Brooklyn, and she is offering an elephant she knitted to benefit
the church. The opening bid is $200. Let the bidding begin, tech
lobbyists.

The ‘Borgen’ connection

One of Ms. Vestager’s claims to fame is that she is said to be
among the inspirations behind “Borgen,” a critically acclaimed
TV show that has been described as Denmark’s answer to “The West
Wing.” The show featured a female prime minister and had its
premiere months before Ms. Thorning-Schmidt came to power. The
lead actress “followed me around for a day when I was minister
of economy, to see how it works,” Ms. Vestager told a group of
journalists last year, according to EU Observer. Borgen, by the
way, means “castle” in Danish and is the term used for the
building that houses the Danish Parliament and the prime
minister’s office. A New York Times critic once wrote of the
program: “It is remarkable how much suspense and psychological
drama the show squeezes out of cabinet shuffles and health care
reform bills.”

Things she’s said on Twitter

”Her er vi alle sammen ... Så banneret på Twitter lørdag, troede
ikke mine egne øjne. Der før jeg nu :)” Got that? She posted it
alongside a picture of a large banner of her and her colleagues
in the new European government that was hanging from a building
in Brussels.

We’re going to proceed cautiously when trying to translate
Danish, but she’s saying something like “I can’t believe my
eyes.” Ms. Vestager speaks Danish, English and some French.

What else is on her to-do list?

Plenty of far-reaching cases. The commission is conducting a
broad inquiry into how European member states and corporations
concoct deals to reduce the corporations’ taxes. In an interview
this year she said, “If you as a company can get a deal that I
as a company cannot get” then “you can compete with me not on
the merits, because the tax burden is not the same as mine.” The
biggest political hot potato is probably the commission’s
investigation into the practices of Gazprom, the Russian gas
giant. “We have no quarrels with countries as such,” she said,
“what we’re looking at is behavior.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/international/margret
he-vestager-the-danish-politician-who-brought-antitrust-charges-
against-google.html?_r=0