Can we take welcome at face value?

Matt Brittin, the President of Google EMEA, has some warm words for the EU Commission's efforts to regulate political advertising.

We share the Commission's goal of increasing the harmonization of Europe’s transparency rules for political advertising and we support today’s introduction of legislation. ... The Commission’s proposal is an important and welcome step.

Karolina Iwańska of the Panoptykon Foundation interprets this as a bad sign for the proposal.

First sign that the Commission's proposal for regulating political ads is too weak: Google "welcomes" it. https://t.co/6j7UCQLK0s

— Karolina Iwańska (@ka_iwanska) November 26, 2021

However there are other possible interpretations of Google's position.

The first is a cynical one. It is not uncommon for organizations lobbying against regulation to loudly affirm their support for the general principle, while working behind the scenes to water down any concrete measures. Mr Brittin notes that this is a complex field, requiring a balance ..., and although such words could be based on a sincere desire to improve the proposals, they are also consistent with the cynical interpretation.

But there is another interpretation. However much large companies complain about regulation, they are also aware that regulation serves as a source of competitive advantage for them, since large established companies can absorb the costs of compliance more easily than small players. (In the banking sector for example, this effect was expected to increase polarization between larger and smaller players. And in October 2012 I noted the irony that legislation prompted by bad behaviour by large companies can be more burdensome for small companies than for larger companies.) It also establishes barriers to entry, giving them another layer of protection against anything that might fundamentally disrupt their business model.

Large companies often work behind the scenes to influence the shape of emerging regulation in their favour, and Google is clearly signalling its willingness to appear helpful.

Chapter Four of Shoshana Zuboff's book, which is entitled The Moat Around the Castle, details a broad combination of rhetoric and lobbying carried out by Google and its executives to establish Google's freedom from government regulation. However, this doesn't rule out the possibility that Google now takes a more nuanced position, particularly as much of the public and political attention is currently directed at Facebook rather than themselves.

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends ...

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Matt Brittin, New EU political ads law is a step in the right direction (Google, 25 November 2021)

Update: See also Interview with Matt Brittin on Channel Four News (2 December 2022)

Natasha Lomas, Report reveals Big Tech’s last minute lobbying to weaken EU rules (TechCrunch, 22 April 2022)

Jane Merriman, Big banks winners from new contingent capital move (Reuters, 27 August 2010)

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)

Related posts: Regulation and Complexity (October 2012), Decentred Regulation and Responsible Technology (April 2019), Amplification and Attenuation (October 2021)