I have been involved in regulation for enough decades to know the slowing-to-deadening effect regulation can have on innovation and customer service—not as bad as unregulated monopoly, but nowhere near as good for consumers as competition. Try hard to remember when the pre-break-up AT&T would not allow you even to attach a shoulder cradle to your phone—it being classified as a “foreign attachment”—and compare that with the range of communications devices available since the monopoly’s break-up. Or consider the quality of service you get from your quasi-monopoly cable company, at bundled prices bordering on the absurd, which is why, given the chance, millions are cutting the cord as competition rears its lovely head in the entertainment business.

Better to nourish competition in these new markets than to call in the regulators. Which is what the European Commission says it is trying to do. It has decided that Google has a dominant position in search—a finding with which the company, which I once served as a consultant, disagrees—and fined it $2.7 billion for favoring its own services when consumers search for maps, or shopping sites.