A group of 165 tech startups, large firms and industry associations from the U.S. and Europe signed a letter asking the European Commission to take antitrust action against Google to help their businesses compete. The signatories claim to be the biggest coalition ever to complain to the EU’s competition division. (Reuters)

Talking point: The letter argues that Google unfairly leverages its dominance in search to favour its own services in sectors like travel, accommodation and jobs. The group claims the Alphabet subsidiary is violating a 2017 EU competition enforcement decision that barred it from preferring the Google Shopping service in search results and demoting rival services. The letter lands amid impending policy changes in Europe aimed at tempering Big Tech’s power on the internet. The European Commission’s proposed Digital Markets Act would address the central concern expressed in the letter. (Signatories say the law will take too long to become effective and want action against Google sooner.) In the U.K., the proposed Online Harms Bills seeks to set policies around removing hateful content online while preventing political bias in algorithms on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Large U.S. tech firms are also facing pushback at home. In October, U.S. lawmakers published a report in which they referred to Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google as monopolies and recommended strengthening laws to make it easier to crack down on anti-competitive practices.