By hitting Google with a £4bn fine, Margrethe Vestager has proved herself to be the EU's Harry Kane

The details of the latest penalty matter less than the competition commissioner's intent, which is to bring Silicon Valley to heel

Margrethe Vestager: The EU's Competition Commssioner (REUTERS)

Margrethe Vestager is the Harry Kane of the European Commission, a star striker without whom it would be much diminished.

The latest evidence for this comes with the €4.34bn (£3.9bn) anti-trust bomb she has dropped on Google.

The penalty was imposed after EU regulators found it to have abused the dominance of its Android operating system, a favourite among mobile phone makers not named Apple, to cement its dominance in web search.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has 90 days to either change its business practices or face further penalties of up to 5 per cent of its average global daily turnover.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a robust defence of the company’s business practices via a blogpost.

We’ve given the consumer choice, he said.

And the consumer has often chosen Google. That's because its products are very good.

The problem, as Ms Vestager sees it, comes when they are bundled together, to the exclusion of potential rivals who might give the market a bit of competitive vim.

But really, the technicalities of the case are far less important than the intent, which is to bring the tech giants to heel and ensure that they face a degree of regulatory oversight that no one else seems willing or able to impose at this juncture.

This very necessary. Google and its fellow Silicon Valley titans are at the forefront of a new industrial revolution and they have appalling power over us and the markets they serve.

The frequently enjoy a monopoly, or a virtual monopoly, position and monopolies are a dangerous thing.

This is the second mega fine issued by Ms Vestager against the company. A previous penalty of €2.4bn, was imposed following a probe into the company’s shopping comparison service.

With cash reserves of more than $100bn (£77bn) burning a hole in its corporate pocket, Google can easily wear both penalties, not to mention a potential third that could be on the way through another investigation into its AdSense ad placing operation.

The first of the fines is being appealed and Google has indicated that it will do the same with regard to the latest penalty.

This is inevitably going to be a long drawn out process, with the EU and America’s deteriorating relationship and trade battle a potential complicating factor.

That won’t worry Ms Vestager overly. She gives every impression that she can cope with a bowl full of rusty nails for breakfast, and more besides. Ultimately if she scores a win, it should benefit us all, even the fools on this island who want to replace her with a lesser spotted Boris Johnson.

In the meantime, we probably ought to do our bit to help her by making a little more use of Google’s rivals, such as Microsoft’s Bing, which is a perfectly serviceable search engine.

But we probably won’t, so we’ll just have to rely on Ms Vestager’s steely determination to bring this one home.