Google should be broken up, say European MPs
 

The European Parliament has voted in favour of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favours is own services in search results.

Politicians have no power to enforce a break-up, but the landmark vote sends a clear message to European regulators to get tough on the net giant.

US politicians and trade bodies have voiced their dismay at the vote.

The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

She has inherited the anti-competitive case lodged by Google's rivals in 2010.

Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe and rivals asked the commission to investigate four areas:

- The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products

- How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services

- The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around the search terms people use

- Restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines

Continued BBC News - Google should be broken up, say European MPs

The EU Parliament has expressed its opinion, and this is not a anti-trust action. While the European Commission has regulatory initiative over Google's operations in Europe, Google, Inc. is a US based publicly owned corporation.

Google is a (maybe, soon to be was a ) more dominant a player in Europe that in North America so their successes are the cause of drama -- the drama has been coming for years now -- I am not surprised at all.

Microsoft is no longer Europe's whipping boy ... Look how that turned out.

A contrary opinion from Forbes -- Let the Games Begin ...

European Parliament Votes To Break Up Google - Forbes

So in case it happens will it be a good thing or not? :)

anything that's unfavorable to google is a good thing

Bill Gates will have been paying back-handers, that's what this is about, which is the lesser of the two evils? Actually, Google are probably a bit less evil than him :2 cents:

I can live with Bill Gates, he's my homie. MS is the good guy compared to the Google fucks, who would've thought .... you want to download an app, you go to Google Play Store and of course, you are going to need an account there and log in before you get that app. Can you imagine downloading all the .exe files from one single place and having to create an account and use it in order to do so? Google even blocks videos on websites when browsing with my phone until I update their YouTube app; not to mention the way they fuck up 1000s of businesses with each one of their so called SE "updates."

And it's the US government that should break them up. There's anti-trust (or whatever they are called) laws that are enforced in just about any other industry, what's different here?

Yet another reason we should not take advice from Europe; political or otherwise.