Google in Deep Trouble: Company Risks Being Broken Up by European Union
SputnikNews.com
26.03.2018
The European Union has threatened to split up Google into smaller companies. The US firm’s dominance of the internet is out of kilter with the EU’s anti-trust legislation.
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager told the Daily Telegraph they had “grave suspicions” about Google’s monopoly.
Last June she hit Google with a record £2.1 billion fine (US$3 billion) for giving its own comparison shopping service an unfair advantage on the search engine.
Google appealed against the European Commission’s judgement, which would have meant it had to rearrange the way its searched algorithm ranks websites.
The California-based company is facing two other anti-competition lawsuits from the European Commission.
Google Does Nine out of Ten Internet Searches in Europe
Google has a 91.5 percent share of the search engine market in Europe and Mrs. Vestager said the EU was not comfortable with this virtual monopoly.
Asked if the EU was considering forcing Google to break up into smaller companies, in a similar way to the banks after the 2008 financial crisis, she said: “It is important to keep that question open and on the agenda.”
“We are not there yet but it is important to keep an awakened eye,” she told the Telegraph.
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