A 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.
