Hardcoding Habits

In early 2025, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that he estimates EU fined the US tech companies more than $30 Billion over the last decade or so. He went onto lament that instead of US government defending their tech companies from this indirect form of “tariff”, US government itself often led such opposition.

You can understand why big tech shareholders would be rather incensed with this constant barrage of regulations from both sides of the Atlantic, but I often joke with others that thanks to EU and FTC’s in-depth reports on big tech, we actually have a much firmer grasp on big tech’s moat today than we otherwise would have. Indeed, a lot of my understanding related to Google Search’s moat was solidified through UK CMA’s report. The regulators typically have access to a level of granular data that these companies simply do not share with the investors, and even if much of the confidential data points are redacted in the reports available to general public, these reports have provided a strong foundation for me in understanding many of the US big tech companies. It’s not just the reports, but also random regulations here and there that also gives us a sneak peek into the key source of moats for many big tech companies whose competition is often theoretically just a click away.

EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was one such regulation. In early 2024, the DMA went into effect across the EU. This legislation designated companies such as Alphabet as gatekeepers and mandated they cease practices that “unfairly” funnel users from their dominant search engine into their secondary services. I recently came across a very interesting paper that looked into how it affected Google following such regulation came into effect which I will discuss behind the paywall.

In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes, DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Dives publishes one Deep Dive on a publicly listed company every month. You can find all the 66 Deep Dives here.