Germany’s antitrust regulator mentioned Tuesday it has opened an investigation into Google over anti-competitive practices, wielding a brand new regulation that has already been used to scrutinise different US tech giants.

The Federal Cartel Office will examine European models of Google in Germany and Ireland, in addition to and its mum or dad firm, Alphabet, in California, it mentioned in an announcement.

The investigation has an “outstanding cross-market significance” as a result of breadth of Google’s digital merchandise, Cartel workplace head Andreas Mundt mentioned.

“Google’s business model is very fundamentally built on the processing of its users’ data,” Mundt mentioned. “Google has a strategic advantage here due to its established access to competitively relevant data.”

A key query within the probe was whether or not customers “have sufficient choice over the use of their data by Google if they want to use Google services”, he mentioned.

The investigation follows the appliance of a brand new regulation giving the authorities extra energy to rein in large tech corporations, with comparable proceedings launched just lately towards Amazon and Facebook.

Under the modification to Germany’s competitors regulation handed in January, the watchdog mentioned it now has extra energy to “intervene earlier and more effectively” towards large tech corporations, somewhat than merely punishing them for abuses of their dominant market place.

The Federal Cartel Office mentioned final week it’s analyzing whether or not Amazon has “an almost unchallengeable position of economic power”, having already launched two conventional abuse management proceedings.

The watchdog has additionally employed its new powers to widen the scope of an investigation into Facebook over its integration of digital actuality headsets.

The push to tighten laws comes as large tech corporations are going through growing scrutiny across the globe, together with within the United States, the place Google and Facebook are going through antitrust fits.