Time Warner and EMI, bowing to pressure from the European Commission, agreed to drop their joint venture plans after the European Commission raised concerns about the size of a jointly owned company, which would have been three times that of the next largest competitor. According to the European Commission, the joint venture would have too much market power. The European Commission’s goal was to preserve a competitive market for consumers. A similar situation existed with the Time Warner AOL deal, which if approved would dominate the emerging market for downloading music over the Internet. The companies involved had little choice in the matter, if they wanted to operate in the European market, they had to follow the rules.