Tag: European Parliament

US gets shirty with EU over Google

Posted on November 25, 2014 by - News

euroflagzA motion in the European Parliament to be debated tomorrow and voted on on Thursday has raised the ire of the United States.

Two MEPs are proposing that Google should be dismembered because its power is excessive.

And even though the European Parliament has no powers to enforce such a move, it’s attracted ire from the US mission to the EU, according to Reuters.

In an email to the the EU the mission said it was concerned about the call to dismember Google.

It added that looking at competitive problems and remedies should be based on objective and impartial information and “not be politicised”.

If the European Parliament votes for the motion on Thursday, that’s likely to put pressure on the European Commission to step up its investigations.

Google has been under scrutiny by the EC – a separate entity from the parliament for four years following complaints by all and sundry that it is behaving in an antitrust manner.

EU to vote on Google breakup

Posted on November 24, 2014 by - News

euroflagzA motion to break up search giant Google will be debated in the European parliament this week.

That follows scrutiny of Google’s practices within Europe by antitrust regulators.

The vote, proposed by MEPs from Germany and Spain proposes that Google’s search business should be separated from the rest of its business activity.

But even if the vote goes against Google, the parliament doesn’t have the power to take it to pieces.  Nevertheless such a vote in favour would be a bad PR blow to Google, which has led a spin initiative in the last few months to convince Europeans that it isn’t evil.

What a positive vote might do is to put pressure on the EU’s competition commissioner to scrutinise Google more.

Google has argued that it is not anticompetitive and that it already has plenty of competition in Europe.  That hasn’t stopped publishers like News Corp and German publishing outfit Axel Springer getting irated about Google’s marketing clout.