The European Parliament on Thursday voted in favour of a resolution that called for splitting up of Google’s search engine business from the rest of its commercial operations as a potential solution to tackle Google’s dominant position in the European search market.
The resolution, which was passed with 384 votes in favor of the motion and 174 against it, will encourage the European Commission to consider “unbundling search engines from other commercial services.” The motion didn’t specifically mentioned Google by its name, but it’s clear that the California-based search engine remained the main target.
Although the European Parliament lacks the formal authority to split up corporations, the non-binding public motion, will step up the pressure on the European Commission to act against the search giant.
The parliament called on the EC “to prevent any abuse in the marketing of interlinked services by operators of search engines” and “to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services” in the long run.
Google, which has almost 90 per cent of the search market share in the European Union, is currently facing multiple challenges in Europe from European parliamentarians and regulators on a range of issues including privacy, search rankings and copyright. The EU Commission has made it clear that the resolution will not have any impact on the investigation into Google by antitrust authorities.
While Google declined to comment anything, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she will review the case and discuss with complainants before deciding on the next step.
