[UPDATE]EU Parliament May Break Up Google and Unbundle Search Engines

[.spider.]

Günther Öttinger says there will be no Google break up while he is the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda.

https://gigaom.com/2014/11/25/eu-digital-economy-commissioner-comes-out-against-google-break-up/

[ionbasa]

Günther Öttinger says there will be no Google break up while he is the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda.

https://gigaom.com/2014/11/25/eu-digital-economy-commissioner-comes-out-against-google-break-up/

Thanks for the update. Will update the OP with the new relevant information in a while.

[Kingofpants]

You do realize that that would do more harm to Google than benefit. That is not how real life works in these types of situations.

It's not, but if they are monopolizing too much of Europe,They could issue a IP ban to all consumer ip adresses (Not Business) for half a week or so,so people switch to other services.

But that would cause some serious shitstorms.

> People's phones would loose a lot of functionality.

- Google photo backup

- Hangouts texts

- Google app store

- YouTube

- Google movies

- Google music

- Google Books

Etc

> Youtubers in Europe would suffer

> Schools (Unless school= business) would suffer a LOT

> Kids in University would suffer

>People that use Drives cloud storage would suffer

> People that use chrome would suffer

> DNS ban would make loads of people's internet straight up not work

> People that use hangouts free calling thing would suffer (Google voice)

It would hurt Europe a LOT, This is by no means a remotely exhaustive list.

[Guest]

Could the update have something to do with http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/us-lawmakers-ask-europe-not-to-break-up-google/ ?

The people Google owns in Washington put pressure on EU.

[Keudn]

Honestly I wouldn't be all that hurt if a giant company got broken up, the last thing we need is Google owning everything from internet to cars and possibly space, it would become literally impossible for people to live without it and that is NOT a good position to be stuck in

[Toddwjp]

if anything this is the EU trying to force net neutrality on search engines. and to stop google dodging as many taxes.

[Jerakl]

Source:

http://hardware-360.com/european-parliament-votes-to-breakup-google/

 

The article is written in past tense which implies that this has already happened.

However it looks like the commission still has to approve it.

 

 

In a historic move, the European Parliament has voted to unbundle search engines from other commercial services. The move is aimed at ensuring competition is prevalent in the online world. Before the non-binding resolution would take effect,  it will still have to be reviewed and approved by the European Commission.

 

Personal Opinion:

So from what I understand, it seems that the EU have voted that it would be a good idea to breakup companies and search engines. I suspect this is mainly targeted at google (obvs). 

I don't think this would be a good thing for Google, don't they make most of their money off ads from search etc? IDK. google is magic.

 

Either way, this won't be good for Google. They could probably do some things to stop it. Like @The_Strict_Nein said, they could just block service to EU until they overturned it. He also mentioned enforcing it, which is a legitimate issue. How do you break up a company the size of Google? What if they don't want to? I suspect what would happen is like what (I heard) happened to yahoo a while back over not turning over some documents. US gov imposed a fee that doubled every day or something like that, in no time it would have been an unpayable amount of money. Not like they have to pay it. I wonder what would happen if they just flat out refused to pay it. Probably arrests. Iunno

 

AFAIK This isn't a repost. Feel free to enlighten me.

[Octavialicious]

Welp, I'm happy I don't live in the EU. What an utterly stupid move

[Jerakl]

Welp, I'm happy I don't live in the EU. What an utterly stupid move

IDK if it applies world wide, it's possible.

 

Ensuring competition sure is a stupid move, amirite?

Tell that to the FCC

[Octavialicious]

Ensuring competition sure is a stupid move, amirite?

No, screwing over successful companies is unfair and stupid. These people built this company over years and years, and then the government can ruin it all in an instant. 

[Octavialicious]

IDK if it applies world wide, it's possible.

 

If it does, I am literally so done.

[Jerakl]

No, screwing over successful companies is unfair and stupid. These people built this company over years and years, and then the government can ruin it all in an instant. 

[The_Strict_Nein]

I don't see how to the EU can enforce this. A search engine is not like water, it's not a "right", it's a proprietary technique.

 

All Google needs to do is block service to the EU, and watch the up-roar from EU member states. Within a day, this law will be overturned.

 

As I understand it, it means that Google can't, for instance, bundle the Google Search engine with Google Maps.

[The_Strict_Nein]

-snip-

 

A commission is just like a decision making group.

 

It's a specific group of member states that are "commissioned" to investigate an issue

[Jerakl]

A commission is just like a decision making group.

 

It's a specific group of member states that are "commissioned" to investigate an issue

1. thanks

 

2. I think they would split them up into separate entities. Like the company would be "Google" and the search engine would be "Google Search".

 

 

And @nicklmg is viewing. I feel special.

[The_Strict_Nein]

1. thanks

 

2. I think they would split them up into separate entities. Like the company would be "Google" and the search engine would be "Google Search".

 

 

And @nicklmg is viewing. I feel special.

 

But they can't enforce behind closed doors discussions. Even if they were seperated, Google would still make every decision of Google Search

[Techhog]

I'm torn. More competition is good, but Google will obviously stop supporting the engine and will lose like half of their revenue. This move could result in the most monumental changes the tech world has ever seen. What if Google kills Android to save money? Then iOS has an effective monopoly.

[HannahLewis]

The European parliament has not the power to do such. The voting was informal. Only the European commission can decide about such plans and will almost certainly not follow the result of the voting within the parliament. 

[Notional]

Sounds good. It seems people either forgot or don't know, that eu did just this with Microsoft, forcing them to split windows and their media player + internet explorer.

Ad sense and google search will not be forced apart. Only search and the other google products like YouTube, Gmail, google +, etc.

To those who thinks google will block one of the biggest markets in the world; you are out of your minds. The consequences would be gigantic for google.

Ironic how the US just concluded that google can discriminate all non google, competing services. This is good news for Europeans, if it gets ratified.

Next in line must be apple and all their insane propriety.

[ionbasa]

Repost from a thread I wrote days ago: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/255150-updateeu-parliament-may-break-up-google/

I was actually going to post an update to my original thread about this...

[ionbasa]

UPDATE 2:

The European Parliament has voted in favour of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favours its 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.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30228279
 

BRUSSELS — Europe’s resentment of the American technology giant Google reached a new noise level on Thursday as the European Parliament passed a nonbinding vote to break up the company.
...
Both moves are also playing out against the backdrop of a long-running investigation by the European authorities of Google, on which the European Union’s new antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, is still getting up to speed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/international/google-european-union.html
 
Interesting, I didn't think it would even get past the parliament, but I guess I thought incorrectly, although the EU parliament has no legal pull to force this to happen directly, they may be able to do it indirectly. The decision to proceed will be at the hands of EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. Hmm, I have a feeling she may just do it.

[mr moose]

I don't know why people think this is bad for competition.  When I search the internet for something I prefer the search results to be sorted by relevance to my query, not by how much each company pays google. 

[mr moose]

Just like I said in the other thread, I don;t understand why people think this is a bad thing.  I want my search results to be the result of what I type in the search box, not a list of companies that pay google to be at the top of the search results.

 

For the record, yes I do use other search engines, I swap between them because sometimes the stuff I am looking for is left of centre.

[.spider.]

I want my search results to be the result of what I type in the search box, not a list of companies that pay google to be at the top of the search results.

 

For me they are clearly marked as an add "Anzeige" and somehow google has to earn money they aren't doing it just for fun.

[SuperfastJellyfish]

Ensuring competition sure is a stupid move, amirite?

It's not Google's fault that their product is vastly superior to others. Don't like it, don't use it. Apple products (OSX + iOS) use Yahoo search by default on Safari, and all Windows based computers use Bing (IE) by default. Basically every product you can buy that isn't an Android powered device uses something other than Google search by default, but people still go our of their way to use it.