IT Essentials: The axe falls

The Big Tech headsman threatens to become a bogeyman

Regulation keeps the industry honest and protects the consumer. But how strictly the rules are applied varies massively by country.

This week the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK's competition regulator, made two big decisions affecting the tech landscape.

First, it played its cards close to the chest in Broadcom's potential merger with VMware, holding a final report until late August - just two months before the deal is set to close. It's safe to say that nerves are fraying at both firms.

Just a few days later, the CMA blocked Microsoft's proposed takeover of Activision-Blizzard, becoming the first competition agency to block two big tech mergers (it was also the first to block one, last year).

In both cases, the CMA is acting as the headsman - either holding the axe poised to swing or cutting a clean divide between companies.

The agency has been gearing up to tackle Big Tech for years, but even as platform regulation in other markets steps up, competition regulation is sparse and slow.

Even the European Commission - criticised pre-Brexit as a blocker to innovation - only intervened in 4% of software deals between 2019 and 2022, compared to the CMA's 37%.

Thanks to broad discretion over its remit and sweeping powers, the UK has one of the world's leading antitrust regulators. Could it now be taking the reins in breaking up Big Tech? Such a move would certainly make the UK a world leader, although perhaps not in the way the government wanted when it's talked about becoming a science and tech superpower.