In its latest broadside against American technology companies, the EU last month slapped Google with a record $2.7 billion fine for leveraging its dominance as a search engine to boost Google Shopping over competing online services. This is indicative of the EU’s ongoing battle with American tech companies, with Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft under constant scrutiny of the regulators in Brussels. But this EU flavor of antitrust is very different from American antitrust law and has far more to do with industrial policy than consumer protection.

Antitrust law is something the government takes pretty seriously. In short, these are laws designed to protect consumers from companies that would abuse their market power to the detriment of the customer.