"We generally have a romantic vision of the Internet" but the Antitrust has a duty to look at the other side of the coin and at the "risks arising from digitalisation" and the "new inequalities" created by the Internet: he is the president of the Italian Antitrust, Giovanni Pitruzzella, to support it in an interview given today to the "Corriere delle sera".
After recalling that "the economic giants of the web operate in a quasi-monopoly regime" and that this "risks blocking the heart of what the Internet has been, namely innovation", Pitruzzella shines the spotlight and stigmatizes what he defines as "the capture economy” that is the unilateral and invasive use that the Internet masters make of our tastes and habits to provide us, through the information that we involuntarily provide them, with products and services that they decide to offer us, often violating our privacy and limiting our freedom of choice.
Pitruzzella then says he completely agrees with the European Commission and with the line adopted by Commissioner Margrethe Vestager according to which "the Google search engine is accused, through its Google Shopping service, of releasing those related to its services as first results ” with an offer to consumers “undermined by search engine interests”. Other than the neutrality of the search engine algorithm.
This is why – is the conclusion of the president of the Antitrust – “we must avoid falling into a new Wild West” and “regulations are also needed for the Internet”.
