Google Shuffles Top Policy Team Amid Ongoing EU Antitrust Row

Caroline Atkinson, an experienced diplomat Google hired last year to steer its global policy efforts, is stepping aside from that management role, according to Bloomberg.

Google confirmed her move but said it was an administrative change designed to place oversight of the policy role at its headquarters, and she will stay on as chief policy adviser. Leslie Miller, a Google policy director based in California, is filling in the top policy role on an interim basis. "Caroline will be focusing on external-facing work and priorities, and Leslie will manage the team," a Google spokesman said.

The staffing shakeup comes as the Alphabet unit negotiates terms in the European Union in the aftermath of a record antitrust fine and big technology companies face rising regulatory scrutiny in the U.S., including a renewed call for tougher competition enforcement.

Atkinson came to Google in March 2016. Before joining the internet search giant, she was an economic adviser to President Barack Obama, serving as his representative to the Group of Eight and G-20 global summits. She was part of a wave of Obama staff to move to technology firms as his second term came to an end. A number of people also left Google for Obama’s White House while he was in office.

Atkinson’s tenure was distinguished primarily by the antitrust case in Europe. In June, the EU slapped Google with a record $2.7 billion fine for abusing its market position to favor its shopping search service. Google is working to appease the agency’s requests to avoid further penalties. The EU has other outstanding antitrust cases against the company. In April, Google settled an antitrust case in Russia, which forced them to stop pre-installing its lucrative services on Android smartphones in that country.

In the wake of the EU ruling, some Google critics have called on U.S. enforcement agencies to investigate the the company over its dominance in online search. Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, said in a tweet that she had visited her counterparts at the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. "Good, constructive cooperation," Vestager wrote.