EU Must Be Speedy to Catch Tech Giants, Antitrust Watchdog Warns

The European Union’s top antitrust official warned that enforcers must move faster to tackle big tech’s bad behavior, hinting at how they may try to fix future problems.

“We must intervene promptly” Olivier Guersent, director general of the European Commission’s competition unit, said at an online conference. If you are too slow, “you impose a very high fine but the damage is done and there’s nothing you can do to repair the harm” when tech giants take over a market.

His comments follow stinging criticisms of the pace and effectiveness of the EU’s probes into Google. The Alphabet Inc. ...