Meet Denmark’s ‘Iron Lady’, who could cost Google $6.6 billion
She’s been called the “Goblin under Google’s bed”, and her actions could force big U.S. companies to pay billions of dollars in fines.
She’s Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s new competition commissioner, who is living up to her nickname “The Iron Lady of Denmark” by taking on industry giants such as Google , MasterCard , Starbucks and Amazon .
Vestager arrived in Brussels in November and promptly kick-started moribund competition investigations back to life. After five years of inquiries, the competition commission in April finally slapped Google with formal antitrust charges that could cost the tech company $6.6 billion in fines, if its online search is found to be unfair to rivals. Also on the docket: Probes into Apple’s tax arrangements, General Electrics’s bid for Alstom and Gazprom’s pricing, among others.
And the new antitrust chief has added to that list since taking up her role. She‘s opened a sweeping inquiry into e-commerce companies’ cross-border trade, which could involve questions for eBay and Netflix . In July, she took aim at MasterCard, accusing the credit-card company of artificially bumping up costs of card payments for retailers. In her latest set of charges, she’s targeting six major U.S. film studios, including Disney , and Warner Bros. , alleging they in collaboration with Sky UK restrict EU consumers’ access to pay-TV services.
Her team is also looking into whether Google, using its Android clout, has illegally blocked the development of rival operating systems, apps and services.
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I hope to be hearing more of you in the future! 
