European Parliament votes to break up Google

[Exterminator]

Content source

http://www.neowin.net/news/european-parliament-votes-to-break-up-google

Europe seems to be heading in a weird direction lately, starting with the right to be forgotten debacle and ending with today’s Parliament vote to break up Google’s business between search and the rest of the company’s products.

Following numerous long-winded investigations into Google’s search practices by the EU’s antitrust authorities, the Parliament voted today for a radical solution: divide Google in two – and supposedly all other similar entities- an independent search company and another company to handle all the other products.

Google has a pretty obvious monopolistic position inside the EU with the American company accounting for a reported 90% of web searches on the continent. And back in 2010 its competitors complained to the EU that the search giant was favoring its own products in search results, which had led to the above mentioned investigation.

However the Parliament doesn’t actually have the power to enforce such a radical step. Rather this vote is more like an encouragement towards the European Commission, who does have such power, to keep this possibility open for the long term.

Washington has already come out against such a move by the EU and there’s little doubt that Google will try to fight and appease the parties involved. We’ll have to wait and see if the Commission is serious about implementing such a move, which could be disastrous in many ways, or if it’s simply playing a hard game of poker with Google.

Source: EU Parliament

On a similar note you can read this story also

'Right to be forgotten' delisting should be extended worldwide says EU Watchdog

http://www.neowin.net/news/right-to-be-forgotten-delisting-should-be-extended-worldwide-says-eu-watchdoghttp://www.neowin.net/news/right-to...should-be-extended-worldwide-says-eu-watchdog

 

[frogboy]

All i can say is WTF?

 

[akshay1189]

In the U.S. Companies like Google can donate As much money as they want to political campaigns. As long as that continues don’t expect legislators to make any changes that benefit ordinary citizens at the expense of those with deep pockets.

 

[akshay1189]

I dislike Google, but not for the specific reasons mentioned in this article. Google not only monopolizes the search engine use around the world, it also has a vast control over small mom and pop internet businesses. Google's algorithms used to rank web sites that ultimately drives traffic to them hammer them with unfair practices that basically rank sites with deeper pockets who can pay for better placement on the first page of Google searches; thus leaving smaller sites with substantially fewer resources hanging out to dry and ultimately fail.

Google changes those algorithms constantly and it makes it difficult if not impossible for small sites to compete with corporations who can afford to constantly pay for site optimization. In the end, small sites often fail and can not compete against big retailers because of Google's going after big advertising dollars from major companies. Google has taken a level playing field and made it a mine field for small business owners.

Google has too much control over the internet and the traffic that goes to web sites. This is tantamount J.D. Rockerfeller's monopolistic Standard Oil Company back in the 1911 when it was broken up into different entities. Google is the dark side of internet search engines just like Microsoft is the dark side of operation systems on PCs.....both are monopolies in their own right.