Opinion Googlephobia

Is Google too big to be allowed to exist? More than one court of law and law-making body has asked some version of this question. As Google expands, increased scrutiny of its products and business practices is only to be expected. But now, after battling it out for years with the European Union, which has repeatedly spurned its concessions on antitrust regulation, a section of European legislators and officials has sponsored a European parliament resolution asking that powerful internet companies thought to be abusing their dominant positions be reined in, and suggesting that search be hived off from other services.

While parliament has no formal power to force the dissolution of Google — clearly the player the resolution is aimed at — such an endorsement would exert considerable political pressure on its executive arm, the EC, to take a tougher line against Google in its long-running negotiations with the company on an antitrust case. The specific aspects of Google’s practices under examination are: one, whether it is deliberately downranking sites it sees as a competitive threat from search results; and two, if it abused its market share in search to squeeze out smaller advertising rivals.

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But as a rare instance of public intervention from Washington on behalf of a single company suggests, such a move would lend credence to accusations that the EU is overzealous in its scrutiny of Silicon Valley — with Google as the totemic stand-in — and protectionist about small European businesses. While parliament’s sabre-rattling may ultimately amount to little more than political posturing, this resolution could be a signal that it is susceptible to lobbying by domestic digital companies losing business that seek to use “consumer interest” as a fig leaf to protect inferior products. Instead of intervening in this way, Brussels should let the market do its job. After all, an upstart called Google once upended the internet by knocking Yahoo! and MSN off their lofty perch not so long ago.