Europe votes in favor of breaking up Google

[undeterred]

The European Parliament can't force Google to change, but its call for 'non-discriminatory online search' gives others the mandate to act

By Vlad Savov on November 27, 2014 08:02 am

The European Parliament has today approved a non-binding resolution calling for the "unbundling of search engines from other commercial services" in order to ensure "competitive conditions within the digital single market." This proposal stirred up plenty of discontent when it was revealed a week ago, but it has been affirmed in its original form today, including the controversial unbundling provision. Without the authority to act on this resolution itself, the European Parliament is asking the European Commission and the EU's member states to ameliorate Google's dominant and apparently discriminatory position in online search by forcing it to decouple its search and ads businesses. The language is strong, describing search engines as "gatekeepers" that are of particular importance, and urging the Commission "to enforce EU competition rules decisively."

The other important provision in today's resolution is the Parliament reiterating its unqualified support for net neutrality:
"All internet traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, irrespective of its sender, receiver, type, content, device, service or application."

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/27/7298849/european-parliament-digital-single-market-motion-vote

Follow up article:
Europe has good reasons to fear Google - With great power comes great scrutiny

What the European Parliament is proposing sounds like Ayn Rand’s worst nightmare. Let’s take Google, one of the best and most cohesive set of web services we have, and fragment it into smaller businesses. Let’s introduce friction and bureaucracy between the various parts so that lesser companies with worse products can have a chance to compete. It feels like a classic case of over-regulation — penalizing a successful company for the crime of being better than everyone else — however its fundamental premise is not wrong: Google is too powerful.

There’s no denying that Google has merited its current dominance in web search. The service that has grown into a verb is used all around the globe because it’s reliably accurate, up to date, and comprehensive. Google supplements the basic results from its search algorithms with advertising — its primary source of income — and links to its own related web services like Maps, News, and YouTube. For the vast majority of users, this cross-promotion of Google products is helpful: it expands the format of search results beyond a mere index of web links and does it with arguably the best services in each category (Google+ ignominiously excepted). Seen in isolation, Google’s efforts to keep users locked inside its ecosystem are scarcely objectionable, but their success has created undesirable market distortions that EU regulators are trying to correct.

Read more at: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/28/7301681/europe-is-right-to-fear-google

[Xipe Totec]

1. non-binding resolution nt

[Prophet 451]

2. Interesting but won't have any effect

Google are far too rich for any country to risk offending them. Also, they make the best tablets (IMO) and no-one wants to have them unbundled.

[santamargarita]

3. I can think of plenty of fascist pig corporations I'd like to see

break up: banks, oil companies...