Google has faced criticism in Europe about everything from privacy to tax policies, and has wrestled with a European court ruling that required it to remove links from search results.
In 2014 there was talk about Google abusing its advertising monopoly in Europe. The tech giant has 68 per cent of the search market in the US and more than 90 per cent in many European countries. This prompted calls for Google to be “broken up”. Joaquín Almunia, Europe’s former competition commissioner, negotiated a settlement which required Google to give more prominence to rivals’ shopping and map services alongside its own in search results. But his predecessor prefers to handle things in court and has reportedly started preparing a Statement of Objections. If found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour, Google will be facing a hefty fine. However, it’s been suggested that all technology monopolies eventually topple and Google may be next in line as Facebook allegedly eats into the company’s advertising revenue. It has also been noted that unlike Microsoft’s 90 per cent share of the PC operating system market, which seems to have stood the test of time, Google’s share of the market has fluctuated. Google has also recently made numerous moves which made it look as if the company had lost the sharpness it is reputed for. An example of this is Google’s failure to secure deals with Apple and Mozilla Firefox to be the default search engines for those browsers. Read more about Google:- Facebook, Google, World of Warcraft: Learning from the greats on how to make your site addictive
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