The real tension in this area is what happens if the “pro-growth” agenda collides with the “pro-competition” one when the CMA is considering whether to shake up a UK market.
Google, one assumes, would hate some of the CMA’s early ideas, such as forcing it to make data available to other businesses, and may regard them as anti-growth or anti-innovation.
Sarah Cardell, the watchdog’s chief executive, listed “pace” as the first of her “four Ps” for the new era, and nobody will grumble about a commitment to reduce the target for dealing with straightforward merger cases from 35 working days to 25.
A natural reading is that the CMA has been prodded to ignore deals in the style of Microsoft’s bid for fellow US company Activision Blizzard, the Call of Duty developer, in 2023.
Recall that the CMA’s initial refusal prompted a senior Microsoft executive to launch into a wild rant about “our darkest day in our four decades in Britain”.
