Who is Margrethe Vestager?

Perhaps I lead a sheltered life, but I had never heard of Ms Vestager until last week when the EU Competition Commissioner, decided to bring antitrust charges against Google.  Lately she has been spending a lot time with the press and public forums where she can explain the actions which were several years in the making.  [ see Natasha Singer and James Kanter, Google's Steely Adversary, New York Times, 19 April 2015 ].  She tries hard to justify bringing these kind of charges against Google, but not many others doing exactly what Google does as a part of their commercial business.  A more interesting slant on the whole thing comes from The Financial Times [Richard Waters, Christian Oliver and Alex Barker, How Google ended up 'on the wrong side of history']  

This article says it took a long time to bring charges because Ms Vestager's predecessor, Joaquin Almunia, slow-rolled the whole thing because he "... grew convinced the anti-Google campaign was largely  driven by arch-rival Microsoft, leading him to discount some compalints.  Collegues recall him grumbling:  if Steve Balmer of Mircrosoft has a problem, why is he sending proxies to see me?"  He also had his staff expressing doubts about the strength of the case, on the basis that the arguments were too novel.  

The FT article leads us to believe that Edward Snowden's disclosures has a lot to do with Germany turning on the heat with Google and it partly came from a belief in Europe that the U.S. was managing too much of the Internet.  This latter being something that comes up from time to time, especially when the Russians engage on the issue.  Putin expressed his opinion when he said the Internet was a "CIA project" without any explanation of what he meant.  

As to what she really is, the NY Times has more understanding of the real person.  She sharply cut Denmark's social benefits, especially unemployment.  A group of unemployed builders gave her a life-sized sculpture of a hand with the middle finger raised, and she keeps it in her office.  That must surprise a lot of visitors.  I don't know many government employees who could get away with something like that.  A reporter who covers her said she "is seen as a very tough, cold-hearted politician."  The kind who would bring charges against Google for doing what every search engine does, especially one managed by a business.  I don't find many Google products mentioned in Bing,  Microsoft's own.  Yahoo doesn't give equal prominance to Google products.  Why would they?  When the U.S. decided not to pursue anti-trust charges against Google, they were right.  While the Europeans might find it the equivalent of a crime to put their own products first, we certainly don't.  If they want to play this game, we should do the same to them.