Although merely symbolic — the resolution carries no legal weight — the move came the day after a separate European body sought to further expand citizens’ “right to be forgotten” privacy protections against Google.
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.
A breakup of Google in Europe will almost certainly not happen, legal experts say. And whether any of the various policy moves afoot will ever significantly curtail the company’s business operations across the region is still too soon to gauge.
A monitor in Google's offices in Berlin. Privacy advocates in Europe want to expand ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Should Apply Worldwide, E.U. Panel SaysNOV. 26, 2014
Andreas Schwab is a German member of the center-right European People’s Party.European Legislator Urging the Breakup of Google Has Ties to a Law FirmNOV. 26, 2014
Margrethe Vestager, Europe's new antitrust chief, in September. Google has faced an increasing barrage of criticism in Europe over privacy.European Antitrust Regulators to Hold Discussions With Google’s RivalsNOV. 11, 2014
Joaquín Almunia, the European Union’s competition commissioner, who leaves his post later this year, has made the antitrust settlement with Google a top priority.Google Settles Its European Antitrust Case; Critics RemainFEB. 5, 2014
But taken together, the level of policy-making activity being devoted to the company signifies the growing antipathy to American technological dominance in the European Union even as its citizens grow ever more reliant on its gadgetry and conveniences. Not since European officials spent years seeking to rein in the powers of an earlier tech titan, Microsoft, has an American company drawn such scrutiny on this side of the Atlantic.
European fears of American technology giants have been stoked in the last 18 months by the revelations of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, about American intelligence agencies’ spying activities and perceived easy access to the world’s tech infrastructure. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany publicly complained when it was discovered last year that her cellphone had most likely been tapped by American intelligence.
In one sense, Thursday’s vote amounts to little more than political posturing because the Parliament has no formal power over antitrust policy in the 28 countries of the European Union. That power rests with the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm. Yet the vote could raise pressure on Ms. Vestager to speed a decision on whether to bring formal antitrust charges against Google in an investigation that began in 2010. That inquiry involves Google’s dominant position in Europe’s Internet search business and asks whether the company’s search results favor other Google-related services and hobble competing search advertising platforms.
But even if Ms. Vestager finds fault on Google’s part, analysts said, the most likely outcome might be changes in its business practices and even possibly a big fine — as happened in past European investigations with Microsoft as well as another American tech giant, the chip maker Intel.
“Breaking up Google would be unprecedented in all kinds of ways and seems hugely unlikely in absence of massive, proven consumer harm — and it’s very unclear to me whether the commission is going to find that harm,” said Mario Mariniello of Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels.
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He noted that United States antitrust officials had never found reason to censure Google, despite its market power on both sides of the Atlantic. He said it was “hard to see how Europe could do this alone, and what would be the basis for doing something so fundamentally different from the U.S. authorities.”
Ricardo Cardoso, spokesman for Ms. Vestager, said after the parliamentary vote that she would not be swayed by the result. Antitrust should be “independent from politics” so that Europe’s “procedures are not put into question,” he said.
A Google spokesman, Al Verney, declined to comment.
The vote was taken on a broader resolution on the digital economy that passed with 384
votes in favor, 174 against and 56 abstentions.
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