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EU Broadens Probe of Search Engines and Privacy
Raver32 sends in word of a PC World article reporting that EU officials are looking beyond Google in their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy. Quoting: "A panel of European data protection officials called the Article 29 Working Group decided Wednesday to request information from Google's rivals amid concerns that search engines are holding onto information about the people who use them for too long, Hustinx said. Hustinx... declined to name the companies. However, they are believed to include Yahoo Inc., Lycos Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live.com."
This is just another example of the EU trying to limit American companies so that they can force their own homegrown (and invariably inferior) products on their member states.
It's a real shame the EU doesn't fund innovation instead of lame copies, then it wouldn't have to spend so much money trying to keep outside products down.
Another example of EU idiocy is the co-production system in TV and film - the EU will help fund projects that are produced in more than one EU country. This is great, except the associated costs of forcing a production to be split can raise the budget by 25% or even more. Quite often this is more than the EU will put in to the project. This is why there are so many crappy films with half the crew being French, a quarter German and a quarter from Luxembourg.
The EU started out as a common market, to make trade easier between European countries. Now it's turned into an anti-America machine. Now everybody loses.