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

In an unrelated news item...

[mmell]

Europe disappeared from the worldwide web today.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Em Adespoton]

Europe disappeared from the worldwide web today.

Would that be because the EU parliament exercised their right to be forgotten?

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

This stupid nonsense is posted every time the EU acts in relation to american companies.

It's among the worst nationalistic hogwash misconceptions ever, easily on par with North Korea rambling about its moon base.

The EU is bigger than the USA in almost every metric, especially on the important ones: Population count (507 mio. vs. 319 mio.) and GDP (18.4 trio. US$ vs. 16.8 trio. US$).

Any big american company deciding to withdraw from Europe would have its board of directors kicked out faster than they can sign the paperwork to make it happen, or watch its stock crash & burn, because they've just not only moved out of its biggest market, they've also given a free playing ground for a global competitor to emerge unchallenged.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[slimjim8094]

But this represents an existential threat - when viewed that way, it's a no-brainer to give up a market, even a huge market, if the price of admission is too high. Also, Google doesn't have to stop serving them, just stop doing business there.

Also, don't forget that Google pulled out of China, and China has a lot more population and will have the biggest GDP shortly. This is far more concerning than a little espionage.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Population count (507 mio. vs. 319 mio.) and GDP (18.4 trio. US$ vs. 16.8 trio. US$).

Given their superior regulatory environment, why does the EU only make less than 70% per-capita of what the US makes? Especially given that many US-headquartered companies are recognizing most of their revenue in Ireland.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[theVarangian]

But this represents an existential threat - when viewed that way, it's a no-brainer to give up a market, even a huge market, if the price of admission is too high. Also, Google doesn't have to stop serving them, just stop doing business there.

Also, don't forget that Google pulled out of China, and China has a lot more population and will have the biggest GDP shortly. This is far more concerning than a little espionage.

But China was demanding a bit more than the EU who merely wants Google to break up it's operations in the EU into separate business units. China wanted Google to censor web searches and rat out Chinese citizens for regime critical utterances and activities. Pulling out of China in the face of those demands makes sense since Google's position as an information broker depends to a large extent on whether the public trusts them or not. If a large number of people get the notion that Google cannot be trusted, Google could easily see a collapse of it's share of the internet search market. Of course somebody will inevitably ignore this fact and go straight to pointing out that Google feeds information about it's users to the NSA as a matter of course (and as if that was a proven fact) to which I'll respond that I'm no friend of Google, I think they have become a dangerous monopolist, but I'll also consider them innocent of collaborating with the NSA until they are proven guilty.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[theVarangian]

Population count (507 mio. vs. 319 mio.) and GDP (18.4 trio. US$ vs. 16.8 trio. US$).

Given their superior regulatory environment, why does the EU only make less than 70% per-capita of what the US makes? Especially given that many US-headquartered companies are recognizing most of their revenue in Ireland.

Because the EU added several Eastern European nations as members who were, and to some extent still are, recovering from two world wars and 50 years as vassal states of the Soviet Union. Man of these countries are suffering through the usual corruption and political instability issues that plague all young democracies. Just try to imagine that the USA admitted a few dysfunctional South American countries with broken economies and a few tens of millions of poor working class citizens as new states of your union. The per capita economic output of the USA would take a bit of a nosedive. The reason that most US-headquartered companies are recognising their revenue in Ireland is because they are dodging taxes, the EU as a whole does not benefit from that because their corporate slime balls are doing the same thing. The only ones benefitting from the now famous 'double Irish' tax dodge are corrupt Irish politicians.

Re:In an unrelated news item...

[Tom]

but the U.S. leads in per capita consumer spending.

Which, as a per capita value is again dependent on the population number for total value, and the population of the EU is 60% larger.

But the U.S. (and U.S. companies) does not need Europe to sustain businesses tied to consumer products.

Strangely, they seem to think otherwise, because they're going to great efforts to do business in Europe.

switching search engines has no cost

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped using Google long ago, and now block all their known IP addresses.

Is somebody forcing people in the EU to use Google? If they don't want to use it, why don't they just... not? There's no possibility of lock in: you can just point your browser to any search engine you want, and away you go. This isn't a problem that needs government intervention.

Starve the beast, and it will die.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[bmo]

Moreover, if Nokia wasn't run by absolute incompetents, they'd still be a huge player in the smartphone market.

But they farted around with OSes, libraries, and waffled and couldn't decide themselves out of a wet paper bag being while pushed off a cliff. To top it off, the board decided to welcome Microsoft's cukoo-egg into their nest because "OH MY GOD A BILLION DOLLARS."

Google is where it is because a lot of companies are run by boards that are more interested in feathering their own nests instead of what they largely give lip-service to - "innovation"

Look at Yahoo. Go ahead, look at 'em. Point And Laugh. They deserve it.

--
BMO

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.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[rahvin112]

Kept on a leash. Lets be honest here, the ONLY thing that keeps someone from using another competing search engine is nothing at all. The only reason people use Google is because it's better, the minute they stop being better and people will quit using it. I don't consider it much of a monopoly when the barrier to entry is almost nothing.

I don't particularly like them fronting their own service but again, no one is forcing anyone to use Google. It's not even the default search engine for the predominant desktop system! This appears to be being driven by the German politicians who are bowing to their own content industry to try to force google to give them a piece of their search business.

I can't help but feel that this entire push is slimy corruption politics typical to Europe where they try to protect local businesses and harm foreign ones using dubious legal means which are often against WTO agreements.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[CaptBubba]

Yeah a lot of it is politics but you have to admit it is very difficult for anyone to get off the ground because whenever anyone comes up with something marginally better, usually for a specialized subject (like say flights), Google puts their own version of the same at the top of the Google search results and effectively attempts to use their current dominance in normal web search to completely eviscerate the newcomer's traffic. A nasty "secret" of the search industry is most people will only hit the first result or so because why click further when "eh close enough" is already there right in front of you?

You don't have to be forcing customers to use your product to be exhibiting anti-competitive behavior, using your market position to make sure that no other companies can be profitable is just as effective.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[rahvin112]

If you think the barrier to entry in the search market is low, you should have a talk with Yahoo or MS, both of which have spent a billion or three on what you call "almost nothing". Either they're all idiots, or you're missing something.

The only barrier to entry is a good search engine that turns out results people want. It's not that hard, but it's far to easy to want to screw up those results to boost revenue, something yahoo was notorious for. Microsoft's biggest expenses related to search were advertising (such as buying Yahoo's search business) and trying to convince people they could be trusted, so far they've mostly failed at both. Even at that Bing is still not as good at returning results as Google is. Maybe that's because Google's entire company is devoted to search and Yahoo and Microsoft are devoted to other things with search being a second class citizen in the company.

But actually a good thing. Of course you'll deny that if you drank too much of the neo-conservative cool-aid, but to any thinking person it's quite clear that the total dominance of a few global superplayers is not beneficial to the market or the people.

You might like putting people in jars but I don't, please don't attempt to classify my political leanings by putting me in a jar, particularly one I despise. The problem with your argument is that the total dominance of Google as you claim could be replaced overnight by people typing a different URL in the bar. There is no barrier to entry other than excellence in search. What I see in search is a very functional and competitive market place. Google messes up once and the lions at their door will eat their market-share in a matter of months. The total lack of barrier's to entry, the ease with which consumers can switch and the fact that prices are falling indicates a healthy free-market, even if one of the players is dominant. All regulations will do in a situation like this is break the functioning market. I'm all for regulating markets, just not doing it to ones that are functioning relatively freely.

European regulations should be focusing on the edges of the market where Google is trying to manipulate things, such as forcing them to randomize product listing instead of always listing their own first. Or making sure they don't turn their Android system into a vehicle to mobile control (but by all reports Europe has a healthier mobile competition than the US with a functional player in Microsoft). Or even leveraging their android wear or android car to gain control of other markets. Again though the touch should be light, by all accounts these markets are free and functional. Overly heavy regulation is as damaging as no regulation at all.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[steelfood]

Everyone does it. It's called protectionism, and no country is guilt-free. It's a matter of how smartly it's done. This move? Stupid. Picking a fight with Google (or even trash talking, which this really is) is a really dumb idea. Nothing's really going to come out of this, except for maybe a bit of egg on some world leader's face at a Google-hosted party. Toppling democratically-elected regimes in unstable regions? Brilliant. Chances of success are almost a hundred percent, and the trade benefits are tremendous. It's only called bullying if you're caught doing it and nobody's really looking that way anyway.

My point being, you shouldn't be so surprised political leaders are making lots of patriotic noise. It's what doesn't get into the papers that's the real eye-openers.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[walterbyrd]

> The EU seems to have a chip on their shoulders about Google.

Because Microsoft pays better. Just business, nothing personal.

During the OOXML, Microsoft was caught red-handed giving bribes to European officials.

When somebody sticks it to Microsoft, Microsoft often uses the same tactic against it's competitors. Remember Europe saying MS had a monopoly? A few bribes later, and viola, MS competitors have a monopoly.

BTW: I think US politicians are even worse.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

I hear this a lot but I don't see this. I search Google by famous stock ticker names, and I always get Yahoo finance results as the top result. Google finance is 3rd or later, second is either "advice" from bloomberg or the company's own website.

Re:What's so special about Google?

[bingoUV]

I had heard of poor reading comprehension, but not understanding your own statement? You take the cake. Look, "barrier to entry" doesn't matter to Microsoft and Yahoo - they have already entered. What you are referring to while calling it "barrier to entry" is actually "barrier to becoming the top player".

Free market does NOT depend on this being low, nor does a free market cause it to be low. This barrier being low does a world of bad for everyone.

Why does Europe use Google?

[Spy Handler]

they should create their own GNU/Linux search engine, maybe out of Finland. Surely they'd be good at it.

EU is getting too powerful

[DavenH]

Time to break the EU into several different countries.

Re:EU is getting too powerful

[Shakrai]

That's because the EU is really an economic concern trying to masquerade as a country. It originally started as the European Coal and Steel Community. It has always been about economics. A handful of rich and powerful countries benefit from a common market and currency. Countries that would probably be better off outside of the Eurozone won't leave it because the rich and powerful therein benefit. Well monied interests calling the shots is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.

Europe won't truly unite absent some sort of external and existential threat. It took such a threat to unify the United States back in the day and the American colonies had a shared culture, language, and no history of going to war with one another. Even at that there was a rather bloody Civil War and regional tensions that still simmer to this day...

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[bmo]

It actually hurt my brain to read your reply.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

--
BMO

Re:Standards

[eht]

And Google is happy to let you take your data out of them.

https://www.google.com/setting...

Want out of the Google experience? Here is all your data available to take to your new service.

I can not think of another company that offers anything remotely similar to this.

Re:Google also has a plan

[Guppy]

Practically, the EU branch of their offices needs to be little more than a cubicle with a lawyer and desk.

But oddly enough, on paper it seems a huge portion of Google "exists" in the EU, legally speaking. As far as revenues and expenses go, a huge portion of Google's revenues and expenses are "generated" there, (specifically, Ireland), thanks to an international tax dodge.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

Like it or not, idiots or not, they do have such business, simply because your poor little "american company" is no such thing. It's an international corporation that was once founded in america, but now does business all over the world, including within the EU and actually quite a lot of it.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[johnjaydk]

Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists. They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

I could have moderated your drivel to hell but that wouldn't help much.

The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU. It's called sovereignty and the US does it too all the time. Having a beef with virtual or actual monopolies is not exactly a communist thing either. A monopoly is a direct attack on the free market and therefore upsets true free market believers.

The US have a long, although not resent, history of cracking down on monopolies. The Standard Oil case is the poster child for this kind of policy.

Sure thing

[wiredlogic]

Let me know when the EU get's around to slapping Apple for browser bundling and not providing an install screen to select alternatives.

Re:Sure thing

[thegarbz]

I don't think you understand what a monopoly is, or how antitrust works. Hint: simply bundling applications is not an antitrust violation.

Re:If Google happens to be an EU corporation ...

[johnjaydk]

What EU really wants to achieve is to break America ...

Nice conspiracy theory but we can't even get along internally over here. Herding all the cats into a unified, secret attack on the US would require a coordinated act by several deities.

I'm afraid any break up is self inflicted. The US is already even more fractured than EU.

EU citisens are skeptic too

[xonen]

As EU citizen, i can only say this is received with a lot of skepticism here too. And the usual anti-EU sentiment.

While i'm pretty `pro-EU`, i indeed think this is bullshit. Yes, Google has some sort of monopoly, however, monopolies are only a problem when abused. I don't see that abuse part. Also, there are plenty alternatives, however, Google is the biggest simply because they are the best at what they do. For them it's core business. For MS and Yahoo it's not their core business.

Anyways. it will blow over i guess. They prefer to launch this kind of bullshit ideas instead of worrying the things they really should worry about; like unemployment rates, poverty, eastern relationships, etc etc.

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.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[sabri]

The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU. It's called sovereignty and the US does it too all the time. Having a beef with virtual or actual monopolies is not exactly a communist thing either. A monopoly is a direct attack on the free market and therefore upsets true free market believers.

Finally at least a reply that contains an actual argument. Thanks for that.

I actually agree with you. The EU can set conditions for allowing a company to operate within the EU. However, they EU should not be in a position to split up a privately owned enterprise. If they feel that Google has too big of a market share, than they should encourage competition. Which, BTW, there is a lot of. Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo, Ask.com (yikes) and many others.

In the case of Microsoft's anti-trust case, there was no such thing. Most people and business needed a Windows PC because (at the time) it was pretty much the only thing that would be compatible with your neighbor's PC. MS controlled the desktop. Switching required a installing a new operating system, and most people didn't even know how to do that let alone that they were even aware of alternatives.

Google does not control your search engine. Internet Explorer defaults to Bing, and soon Firefox will default to Yahoo. It is easy to switch default search engines, all you need is to change a bookmark. However, I prefer Google simply because it's better and a lot of people will do the same.

Having a better product than others doesn't necessarily mean you're an illegal monopoly. Google's perceived monopoly can be gone in six months, as soon as a competitor brings a better product.

Look at Myspace vs Facebook, for example.

Google Acquires the EU

[l0ungeb0y]

Google announced yesterday the acquisition of the EU and has stated that intends to rollout a new service called Haven.EU that will allow companies to incorporate with this new Google service to evade US corporate income taxes all together.

EU parliament power

[manu0601]

Yet another non binding resolution from EU parliament. This is a fake parliament: if cannot start a EU directive and does not decide on the budget.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Anonymous Coward]

Successful companies eventually pass a threshold in which their ambitions stop being beneficial to the rest of the economy, and start being exploitative of it. Any company, if too successful, will eventually cause more harm than good.

Slippery-sloping the obvious responses to this observation can cause great economic harm as well. But that doesn't change the facts. Monopolism is bad for the economy, and robs everyone of the benefits that justify capitalism.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[matbury]

It's funny that you say EUSSR. The European Central Bank is one of the most fundamentalist free-market neoliberal banking organisations in the world. It puts the Fed and Wall St. to shame (if you think being fundamentalist free-market neoliberal is a good thing). They're prepared to let whole countries go to rack and ruin for the sake of free-market purity.

And Google have an effective monopoly on search and are abusing it. It's a pretty straightforward case for their companies in the EU being broken up. Isn't that one of the functions of small gubbermint in a fundamentalist free-market neoliberal system? You know, to ensure that there's competition and no one entity can become tyranical?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Shakrai]

You tell me how that does not constitute Soviet behavior.

Seriously? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and the EU member states are free to leave any time they wish.

Again, totally nothing factually wrong with that. If it were not for the Americans, all of Europe would either suffer under the Nazis or under the Soviets.

Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?

Are you an American? If you are I wish you'd STFU; you're making the rest of us look bad. WW2 was a team effort. Could the Allies have beaten the Germans without the Russians? Possibly; we did in WW1 after the Russians quit. The butcher's bill would have been a lot higher though. The west (particularly the United States and Canada) got off pretty easy. As far as "Europe would have been under the Soviets", that's debatable. The example of Finland suggests there are limits to how far Stalin was willing to go to gain strategic depth. Germany certainly would have gotten a much rawer deal without American involvement, though ironically enough it was the United States that originally proposed turning Germany into a pastoral state after the conflict.

Sure, if you live in Greece and need the EU to fund your pension

Yeah, well, the same problem is brewing in the United States and I haven't heard a single mainstream politician from either party come up with a proactive way of dealing with it. And guess what? There's no provision for a State to file bankruptcy like Detroit did. What happens when one of the 50 can't meet its obligations? Nobody knows but we're apt to find out in the coming decades....

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Kartu]

Google can complain about "youtube losing money" while keeping ads price on youtube so low that competitors starve., cough.
Google has too much power for "free open market" to be able to "regulate" it, OK?

EU has both legal and MORAL right to dictate anyone in EU market how to behave IN EU.

The "bunch of idiots" forced phone manufacturers to support USB charging, mobile providers to drop roaming charges, to allow you to switch mobile provider while keeping your old phone number, they forced Microsoft to un-bundle IE, PC manufacturers to offer windows-less version etc.

NONE of that would happen just out of "free market" without government pressing them.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Kartu]

Having better product never means you're an illegal monopoly.
Leveraging your monopolistic position to fight competitors in other areas does.
And exactly that is what evil EU is after.

Re: Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[O('_')O_Bush]

The part that makes it trolling is that even if Europe did depend on the U.S. in WWII to save it's butt, that has no relevancy on whether it is right or wrong for the E.U. to consider breaking up Google.

And I am sure you would agree with me had you heard an American use that same argument to try to justify some heinous crime in Europe.

Also, is it just me or do Shakrai and sabri look an awful lot like sock puppets?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

The EU uses a mafia style shakedown program

Get some help for your paranoia issues.

The EU has become so fucking corporation friendly over the past two decades, we have rising poverty in all developed EU countries, falling real wages, unemployment, high percentages of temporary employment and are busy destroying the middle class that kept Europe stable for six decades. All in the name of protecting banksters and corporate profits, who are breaking records yearly.

Accusing the EU of shaking down corporations is orwellian.

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

Yugoslavia was no threat to EU, ever. It was a civil war, and within Europe many people consider it a mistake to become involved.

As for Putin - you can think what you want, he's never expressed any desires to expand into Europe. That he got nervous about Ukraine - well, after Kuba you americans shouldn't be talking. What would you do if there was a revolution in Mexico or Canada and the new government is strongly pro-Russia with open, direct and very vocal russian support? Or chinese. Or both. You'd sit on your asses and say "let the people decide", yes?

Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING.

[Tom]

What part of this is not true? The EU is operating like a socialist federation these days: they shove EU laws (up to and including a constitution) through their member states' throat and enforce them

You have no idea how EU politics works.

What's being "shoved down member states throats" are almost all laws that the national politicians wanted, but couldn't get through locally because of popular resistance and the media eating them alive. So they push it up to the EU, it comes back a few year later, thanks to short public memory they now claim they have no choice, it's an EU mandate, and they get the laws they wanted.