European parliament piles pressure on regulators to break up Google
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European parliament piles pressure on regulators to break up Google

The European Parliament has voted in favour of a resolution calling for the possible break-up of Google.

Although the resolution has no binding power, the development heightens pressure on anti-trust regulators to act and highlights the growing resistance in Europe to the world’s largest search engine.

A majority of 384 MEPs voted for the resolution, with 174 against and 56 abstentions.

News that the European parliament was attempting to end Google’s dominance in the market with the resolution broke earlier this week. Since then, Google has found itself facing a number of other battles, with EU privacy regulators revealing guidelines on Wednesday calling for search engines to widen the bloc’s new right-to-be-forgotten rules to all of their websites.

On Thursday, France and Germany also called for a review of the EU’s competition rules to ensure global internet companies, such as Google, could successfully be targeted. The two governments reportedly wanted to ensure the tax optimisation strategies used by such companies to lower corporate tax rates are no longer possible.

Google has experienced problems with the European Commission over anti-trust issues since 2010, with the search engine giant also facing strong criticism on issues such as privacy and its tax policies.


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