European Parliament lawmakers in Strasbourg voted today – 384 to 174 with 56 abstentions – in favour of a resolution calling Google to split search from its other businesses.
In an effort to curtail the American search juggernaut’s dominance, several Members of the European Parliament (MEP) filed a draft motion last week suggesting the unbundling of Internet search engines from “other commercial services”. Led by German legislator Andreas Schwab, the proposal saw a shift in rhetoric from the EU and unleashed a new dimension to the region’s attempts to bring ‘healthy competition’ to the digital market.
In another aim at Google, European privacy regulators have also issued a new set of guidelines on Wednesday calling the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling to be applied to all of company’s global search results, and not only to European versions of its search engines.