European politicians vote in favour of breaking up Google

It’s very possible that Google will be forced to separate its search engine from its commercial services. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) took a vote on Thursday (CET) where they were in favour of breaking up the search giant, however they didn’t actually name Google in the vote.

They called on the European Commission to investigate search engine practises further and request that "Indexation, evaluation, presentation and ranking by search engines must be unbiased and transparent". The MEPs also voted for measures “to prevent any abuse in the marketing of interlinked services by operators of search engines.”

Of course, from the outer the requests are targeting all search engines like Yahoo, Microsoft and Bing, but given the EC is already investigating Google over an antitrust case, and given incoming EC digital commissioner Günther Oettinger’s suggestion of imposing a tax to Google for displaying copyright-protected material, it’s clear there’s a need to separate Google’s search and commercial services.

Google claims 93% of the European search market and its competitors have expressed their concern that it drives traffic to its affiliates. Expedia, Hotwire, TripAdvisor, Nokia, Oracle, Microsoft, Twenga, Allegro Group, and Foundem have even teamed to form FairSearch, a group lobbying to restore competition in the online search market.

Should the European Commission take on the Parliament’s recommendations, it will determine how Google’s search algorithms work and what results should be returned by each search - a serious modification for the world's biggest economic bloc.

A spokesperson for the European Competition Commissioner Margretha Vestager told the New York Times she would take the necessary time before making a decision.