Europe considers making big tech pay for building the Internet

A report commissioned by Europe’s telecom lobby group ETNO found that 56% of global traffic from 2021 was generated by Google, Meta, Netflix, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. — AFP

When binge-watching TV became a universal pastime at the height of the pandemic, one of Europe’s top officials called the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Netflix Inc. and told him to make his product worse.

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wanted Netflix to reduce the quality of its videos to free up bandwidth, fearing that Europe’s networks were under strain. Reed Hastings complied, cutting data output by about 25% for a month. So did YouTube.