The European Parliament has voted in favor of Google being broken up. It comes after complaints that the search giant was promoting its own services over its competitors’ in search results. Whilst politicians don’t have the power to force the company to break out, the vote demonstrates the demand for this to happen, which European regulators likely to take action.
A number of US politicians and trade bodies have complained about the vote. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager will get the final say on whether the split should go ahead. Google’s competitors lodged a case in 2010, saying that Google was anti-competitive. The company has 90% of the search market in Europe.
The commission has been asked to investigate how Google displays its own services in relation to those of other companies, how it copies content from other sites and incorporates it into its own services, how restricted advertisers are in switching to services offered by rival search companies and whether Google has a monopoly on advertised based on certain search terms. It has predicted that Google could be facing a fine of up to $5 billion.
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