After announcing early this week they would hold a vote on a resolution to break up search giant Google, the European Parliament has passed a non-binding resolution recommending the dismantling of Google into smaller companies.
As mentioned above, the resolution is non-binding but calls for Google to unbundle it’s search services from other services and products that it offers. The European Union has been accusing Google for some time now that they are promoting it’s own services and products through it’s search results, giving the company an unfair advantage over it’s competitors. The main concerns result from the fact that Google has a roughly 90% share of the search engine market in Europe.
“This was a clear political message from the European Parliament,” said a spokesperson for Ramon Tremosa, a member of parliament who authored the anti-Google proposal.
“This is against a monopolistic situation which is damaging the European consumer,” he said.
The vote passed by a large majority with 384 “yes” votes, 174 “no” votes and 56 abstentions. Lawmakers aren’t being naive in thinking that this vote will force Google to break up, but rather
“I don’t think, at the end of the day, that the breaking up as such is what we can expect,” Oettinger said. “Rather we are talking about the consistent and correct implementation of EU legislation to ensure that the interests” of EU businesses and consumers are maintained.
With the passing of the resolution, the matter is now in the hands of the European Commission.
What do you think of the resolution by the European Parliament? Is the almighty Google getting too big and powerful, or is it simply a matter of people using a service that works and delivers exactly what they are looking for when it comes to search and other products? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.
[button link=”http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/27/news/companies/google-europe-breakup/index.html” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: CNN Money[/button][button link=”http://www.thestar.com/business/tech_news/2014/11/27/european_parliament_seeks_google_breakup_over_monopoly_concerns.html” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Star[/button]Featured image courtesy Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
