14 DAY TRIAL // The dominant position occupied by Google in Europe doesn’t really sit well with lawmakers who seem to always find one thing or another to pick on the company about. While antitrust cases against Google don’t seem to be a surprise to anyone anymore, Germany appears to want to take things a step further.
According to The Sunday Times, the Federal Cartel Office in Germany wants to regulate tech giants as utilities in order to cope with the growing powers of companies such as Google.
The publication writes that a 30-page proposal has already been drafted and it seeks to treat Google as a utility, which means the state would have a bigger say in how various services are priced. For instance, it could tell the company how to conduct business with its advertising partners.
While this is just one of the suggestions in the lengthy document, it begs the question – what other things are on the list and how does the Cartel Office intend to regulate Google and other tech giants?
The intention to limit Google’s powers has been around for a long time, and it shouldn’t really come as a surprise when the search engine handles over 90% of queries within Europe. However, previous mentions about this particular document from the Federal Cartel Office indicated that the regulation would be used in emergency situations only, without explaining exactly what this means.
Other German government bodies have also expressed an interest in breaking Google’s monopoly on search services, especially if proof could be brought that the Internet giant has been abusing its market position.
In fact, one German politician compared Google’s situation with an energy company. If such an entity controlled 95 percent of the market, antitrust authorities would be quick to intervene.
The search engine seems to be the primary concern of such bodies, other Google tools aren’t mentioned at all, such as Gmail, Android or the cloud service, which are also areas where Google has quite a bit of control, especially in the mobile OS area.
While Germany’s plans haven’t exactly been officially announced just yet, Google has been in trouble with European authorities for a while now. In fact, just recently, Google reached a deal with the European competition commissioner to settle a long-time inquiry into the way the search engine presents results. The company has been accused on several occasions of messing with competitors and not displaying their products accordingly, pushing forward its own tools.
Despite all of Google’s proposed modifications, there has still been a lot of criticism over the deal, with people saying that it is not nearly enough to fix the issue. Under these circumstances, there’s a chance for the deal to be torn and for Google to be sent back to the drawing board, looking for new solutions.