The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google

An anonymous reader points out a report at the Financial Times (paywalled) which says the European Parliament is preparing to call for the break-up of Google. According to the draft seen by the FT, a potential solution to ongoing anti-trust concerns with Google is "unbundling search engines from other services." The article notes, "The European parliament has no formal power to split up companies, but has increasing influence on the commission, which initiates all EU legislation. The commission has been investigating concerns over Google’s dominance of online search for five years, with critics arguing that the company’s rankings favour its own services, hitting its rivals’ profits. Unbundling cannot be excluded, said Andreas Schwab, a German MEP who is one of the motion’s backers."

Comments

What's so special about Google?

[PhrostyMcByte]

The EU seems to have a chip on their shoulders about Google. I get it, they're huge and they need to be kept on a leash. But when are we going to see them go after other huge companies abusing their market share? We have Amazon regularly putting full-page ads for their latest electronics right on their front page.

Good luck with that EU

[Karmashock]

No seriously... try it. All your bitching and moaning accomplished with MS was a decades long circle jerk. Exactly what do you think is going to happen if you try this with google?

They'll appeal... and then appeal the appeal... and so on... and when we all die of old age they'll still be appealing and screwing you around until no one even remembers what it was about anymore.

Here is the brass tacks... The EU sees a big rich american company doing business in the EU and they're not paying EU taxes. So they're going to fuck around with it until they figure out how to get money from it.

personally, I think Hungry had the right idea... just tax bandwidth... do I ACTUALLY think that is a good idea? no, it is retarded. But it would neatly remove the idiots in government that see everyone making money without paying them as a problem.