“The European parliament is poised to call for a break-up of Google, in one of the most brazen assaults so far on the technology group’s power,” Henry Mance, Alex Barker and Murad Ahmed report for The Financial Times.
“The gambit increases the political pressure on the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to take a tougher line on Google, either in its antitrust investigation into the company or through the introduction of laws to curb its reach,” Mance, Barker and Ahmed report. “A draft motion seen by the Financial Times says that ‘unbundling [of] search engines from other commercial services’ should be considered as a potential solution to Google’s dominance. It has the backing of the parliament’s two main political blocs, the European People’s Party and the Socialists.”
“A vote to effectively single out a big US company for censure is extremely rare in the European parliament and is in part a reflection of how Germany’s politicians have turned against Google this year,” Mance, Barker and Ahmed report. “German centre-right and centre-left politicians are the dominant force in the legislature and German corporate champions, from media groups to telecoms, are among the most vocal of Google’s critics.”
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