You might be interested in a classic (well, pre-Microsoft antitrust) book written by a professor who has specialized in antitrust law. I've interviewed him a few times. Excerpt:

"Professor Armentano thoroughly researches the classic cases in antitrust law and demonstrates a surprising gap between the stated aims of antitrust law and what it actually accomplishes in the real world. Instead of protecting competition, Professor Armentano finds, antitrust law actually protects certain politically-favored competitors. This is an essential work for anyone wishing to understand the limitations and problems of contemporary antitrust actions." http://www.amazon.com/Antitrust-Monopoly-Anatomy-Independent...

Check page 3 on this list: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic.... Of the ten highest cartel fines, only one was levelled against a non-European company (LG Electronics).

This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly" status, much to the commissions chagrin.

> This is because European companies aren't good enough to get to "monopoly" status, much to the commissions chagrin.

I think you misunderstood what the OP said

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but he is saying 9/10 of the largest fines (of this type) were towards EU companies.

So what? US has signed bilateral trade agreements with EU for that reason. As much as EU may benefit from fines on US companies, it's still a strict application of the law. US also benefits from the strict application of their laws when EU companies try to enter the US market. Actually, EU companies rarely try it. Guess why.

I think my point is that I can't find a case where an EU company has been threatened with antitrust action in the EU (or the US). Do you have a counter example? (Genuinely curious not trolling)

That leads me to believe these laws are "not strictly applied" but politically applied.

Get searching:

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm

I think you'll find the overwhelming majority are European companies.

> This has nothing to do with anti-trust

It has everything to do with anti-trust. Google's near-monopoly on search is dangerous, and they've abused it multiple times. Google News and Yelp are good examples: they would steal content (not just link to it as they'd have you believe), then threaten to delist the victim's sites if they complained.

Google News shows a snippet + link to original page, just like search. The difference is that it groups articles about the same thing together. I don't understand your argument.

That's not always been the case. Google News used to copy the entire article content.