INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Alastair Mitchell
Contributor
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Alastair Mitchell is a partner at
multi-stage VC fund EQT Ventures and the fund's B2B sales, marketing and SaaS expert
Ali also focuses on helping US companies scale into Europe and vice versa.
After passively watching for many years as tech giants
developed dominant market positions that threaten consumer privacy and stifle competition, American antitrust regulators seem to have
finally grasped what happening and decided to take action.
This increasing scrutiny, which tacitly acknowledges that Europe more proactive
regulators were perhaps right all along, is helping unleash a wave of tech startups at the expense of big tech
By holding industry titans accountable over the privacy and use of our data, regulators are encouraging long overdue disruption of
everything from back-end infrastructure to consumer services.
Over the past decade, Facebook, Google, Amazon and others have tightened their
grip on their respective domains by buying up hundreds of smaller rivals, with little United States government opposition
But as their dominance has grown, and as egregious privacy violations and mishaps proliferate, regulators can no longer look the other
way.
In recent months, American regulators have announced a flurry of new antitrust investigations into big technology companies
The Federal Trade Commission has voted to fine Facebook $5 billion for misusing consumer data, the United States House Judiciary Committee
is probing the tech industry for antitrust violations and 50 attorneys general announced an antitrust probe into Google
United States officials are even considering establishing a digital watchdog agency.
It hard to understand why it took so long, though
perhaps United States officials were loath to target domestic companies that were driving huge economic growth and creating millions of new
In contrast, their counterparts across the pond have been on an antitrust tear under the watch of European Union antitrust commissioner (and
now also EVP of digital affairs) Margrethe Vestager
Now that regulators from both Europe and the United States are pursuing antitrust probes, they have exposed areas where startups can
innovate.
Startups take on big tech
