The EU wants to break up dominating Google.

[viking60]

The search market is totally dominated by Google and so is the income for advertising.

The antitrust commission is unhappy with these points:

The way Google displays its search services compared to its competitors.
How Google uses content from other websites.
Google's dominance over advertising on search terms.
Restrictions that surround how advertisers can move their campaigns to other search engines.

Basically they are unhappy with the dominating position bordering to monopoly.

In case the proceedings against Google carry on without any satisfying decisions and the current anti-competitive behaviour continues to exist, a regulation of the dominant online web search should be envisaged.

Microsoft will follow this with interest. While they have nothing against Google being punished for their world dominating search engine, they do have a rather dominating position themselves on computer OS'es.

In Italy it has now been established that it is illegal to sell Windows as a part of the PC - people have to chose it, and they are entitled to a refund if they do not want Windows.

A to strong position for one single company is seldom good for the consumers seems to be the EU position.


More here

[dedanna1029]

I'm hoping the mobile link on this will work for others, as I'm on my phone and there is no desktop link:

Google to Facebook Seen Thwarted as EU Clashes on Privacy:

The European Union is backtracking from plans to allow U.S. Internet giants to be regulated by a single data-privacy watchdog in the EU, threatening the so-called one-stop-shop backed by Google Inc. (GOOG) to Facebook Inc. (FB)

Amid a turf war over who gets to regulate some of the world’s biggest companies, justice ministers have dropped proposals to give sole power to regulators where companies have their EU headquarters. As they met in Brussels today, splits emerged over an alternative plan that would see powers spread out, giving other nations the right to veto decisions taken by the lead authority.

I'll not hyperlink the links in the story, as it's a pain ATM, but this will all be interesting to see how it plays out in the end. There are objections in place.

Wish the corporate U.S. would wake up.