Now it’s the Germans turn to attack Google
Coming hard on the heels of France’s attempts last week to curb Google’s activities (See France considers extra tax on Google, Yahoo and Facebook ) now the Germans are considering anti competitive legal rulings.
Last week, in a German magazine interview, government minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger suggested that Google was “becoming a giant monopoly.” She casually asserted that government action might be coming at some point if Google didn’t become more “transparent” and responsive to government concerns.
Almost on cue several companies have filed diverse complaints with Germany’s Cartel Office about Google.
Those complaints, which have not yet been publicly released, involve the following, according to Deutsche Welle:
* German newspaper and magazine publisher associations the VDZ and BDZV have reportedly filed their complaints about uncompensated use of article snippets. There are also complaints about how publications are ranked in Google search and news results
* Shopping site Ciao, now owned by Micrososft, is upset about its AdSense contract (entered into before the Microsoft acquisition): “The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported that Ciao believes the contract to be overly restrictive, while not offering enough transparency on advertising revenues generated by AdSense.”
* Finally mapping site Euro-Cities asserts that the availability of Google Maps to third party sites for free is “is destroying its business model.”
These descriptions are based on second hand information and so it’s impossible to evaluate the merits of the respective parties’ claims.
While there may be merit to some or many of these claims, one gets the sense that there is lots of frustration being expressed in Europe and thrown at Google in the form of various legal theories to see what sticks.
However, as a general matter, Google’s size and market power is alarming many European regulators and they seem intent on finding ways of asserting more control over the company.
