Google Phobia Germany
The EU Anti Google Resolution
The European Parliament resolution of 24/11 hong kong telegram phone number list that "the online search engine market is important to ensure competition as it acts as a content filter and therefore on the possibility of commercializing the secondary exploitation of indexed information" and explicitly requests the Commission (which can request a possible division of Google, unlike the EU Parliament) to "firmly apply EU competition rules that benefit consumers and online businesses up to considering the separation of search engines from other commercial services". It is true that Google (not directly mentioned in the resolution) and other American digital companies have acquired monopolistic positions on the market in consumer technology, but this resolution is not made for the consumer as it is written (who freely chooses whether to go to Google or Yahoo) but for Franco-German publishers who lose advertising revenues as shown by data from emarketers.
Advertising revenue
The Axel Springer Fuse
Recently (spring 2014) the first German publisher Axel Springer (the one of Welt, Bild etc) through the voice of its N. 1 Mathias Dopfner sent a 14-page Christmas letter to Mountain View where it basically says that Google exploits the contents of the publishers for free generating advertising revenues and taking advantage of its monopoly position in the style of IBM and Microsoft. The romantic letter to Schmidt ends by calling for a self-regulatory intervention by Google itself before a legislator does so. Once again the voice of Berlin has been heard by the resolution of the European Parliament of 24/11/14 where many of the themes indicated by Axel Spring are contained. Because what is a priority in Germany seems to be a priority for all of Europe.
Is Breaking Google THE Solution to Google Phobia?
Every day millions of consumers freely choose to access, use and give data in exchange for free (or cheaper) services. It is clear that these global technology-based services (Google, Facebook, Booking.com, Uber and many others) drain resources and taxes from the local to these new large digital monopolies, to the detriment of governments but to the benefit of consumers who pay less for hotels, taxis etc.
Before looking for a solution to these new AI monopolies, the EU should first teach people (and its legislators who know little or nothing about technology…) how these services work “behind the scenes” and perhaps users and the free market will find a new order on their own, not the old one on which Axel Springer, Hachette & Co. have lived for years.
