There is no doubt that American tech companies are dominating when compared to those coming from other countries. The European Union that is getting increasingly worried about their dominance, is launching a program to boost European tech sector in order to compete.
Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are the ones that the EU put its keen eyes on. These companies have massive reach and influence that their presence is putting them under pressure from heavy scrutiny done by the authorities.
Whether or not these companies claimed responsibility or obey the EU, the demands are unexceptionally high that the politico-economic union of 28 member states are looking deeper into their services.
The search engine company controls about 90 percent of web searches in Europe. With that massive power, the EU is concerned that the search giant is abusing its power. Specifically, Google has been accused of promoting its own services and content over its competitors' in online search results.
The European Parliament recommended breaking up Google to weaken its dominance across Europe.
Apple
As one of the oldest companies targeted by the EU's radar, Apple is having itself investigated. The EU is launching an antitrust investigation into its online music streaming service. In particular, EU officials are seeking weak statements inside Apple's agreements with record labels to see whether if the company was going to illegally compete against its rivals.
Apple has also been accused of artificially lowering its European tax bill for decades through a deal with Ireland, where the company's European headquarter is based.
As the EU investigates the matter, officials are deciding whether Apple breaches those rules. If it did, the iPhone-maker could be hit with a higher tax rate and back taxes.
There is no other effective way to get hold of people's private data other than having them willingly giving it. And Facebook is well-known to make people give data by gathering information about what they they write, post, click, and more.
The EU us looking into Facebook's privacy policy because they are concerned about the way it collects data from users in Europe for targeted advertisements. This is further powered by the case that roughly 25,000 Europeans accused Facebook of not respecting their privacy rights and sharing their data with third parties.
Amazon
The giant online retailer is another U.S. company in EU's radar. The European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager launched a probe into Amazon and other e-commerce companies.
The EU wants to investigate whether the online seller breached rules on cross-border trade, for example by charging dramatically different prices for the same product across different EU countries.