Google started its life as a search engine. Its popularity continued to rise exponentially, making the company expands to many other fields. It's powers and dominance grew more and the European isn't happy about it.
The European Union's (EU) Parliament has passed a vote to break up the tech giant Google. Although it has no direct power to intervene and break up the company, it does send a message to Google, saying that the EU is unhappy with its business practices. The motion is viewed as mostly symbolic, thus the resolution carries no legal weight.
The vote was the first ever the European Parliament to break up a company, making it a historic decision. The move highlights the EU's antitrust concentrating in the four following areas of investigation:
- The way Google displays its search services compared to its competitors.
- How Google uses content from other websites.
- Google’s dominance over advertising on search terms.
- Restrictions that surround how advertisers can move their campaigns to other search engines.
On November 27th, 2014, the voting approved to "unbundle" Google's search engine from its other commercial activities. The Parliament voted on a motion to make Google's Search to be independent and neutral from its other commercial services as fears of its growing power.
There is no specific mention of Google in the vote, but the decision has made clear that the EU is unhappy with its search engine's dominance in Europe. The search giant dominates the search engine market with 90 percent of web searches. The number is a lot bigger than the market share in its home country, where Google accounts for 68 percent of searches in the U.S., according to the European Commission.
Google that is dominance in Europe, is also accused by rivals of using that power to monopoly the competition in related digital markets such as price comparison.
The tech giant is conquering most of online activities, ranging from search engines to mobile devices. The resolution stressed that "all internet traffic should be treated equally without discrimination and that the search process and results should be unbiased", was passed with 458 votes to 173.
The company has also been criticized by the EU's digital commissioner, Günther Oettinger, who suggested a "Google Tax" could be introduced, requiring search engine providers like Google to pay a fee for displaying copyrighted materials on their sites.
The growing concerns doesn't stop there. Europe that is "partially" losing in the tech war, is fearing the American technology giants have been used by the American government spy agencies to track activities of the world's technology infrastructure. Stoked by the revelations of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.
Having one of its most powerful company at stake, American politicians have come to the Google's defence. A bipartisan letter from senior Senate and House of representatives figures emerged on the warning against the motion saying: "This and similar proposals build walls rather than bridges [and] do not appear to give full consideration to the negative effect such policies may have on the broader US-EU trade relationship."
The motion has been viewed as a part of the increasingly hostile regulatory environment for American technology companies in Europe over competition, tax and privacy.
Ramon Tremosa, one of the politicians behind the motion, said the result of the vote "gives [a] strong political mandate against monopoly".
The Parliament has no formal power over antitrust policy in the countries of the European Union. Although backed by the parliament's two largest factions, the European People's Party and the Socialists, the power to decide rests with the European Commission. But the vote could raise pressure on Denmark's EU Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, to speed a decision on whether to bring formal antitrust charges against Google in an investigation that began in 2010.
Vestager has said she would take the necessary time before deciding on the next steps in that antitrust case.
Google has not only come under fire from Europe for alleged antitrust practices. In May 2014, the European Court of Justice, ruled that internet users had the right to ask the search giant to remove links that contain irrelevant or outdated information about them. Data protection regulators in Europe said the company had failed to fully implement the ruling and told it to apply the "right to be forgotten" laws to global versions of Google and not just in its European domains. The pressure continues as the "right to be forgotten" has to be applied globally.
In the case of technology companies that have already run the antitrust experience in Europe, the main penalty was being fine. The largest single fine yet in such a case was €1.1 billion, or $1.37 billion, in 2009 against Intel for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market. The next came from Microsoft that went through a series of investigations and settlements, fined up to a total of more than $3 billion in the course of a decade, including a penalty in 2013 for failing to adhere to an earlier settlement.