BRUSSELS -- The European Parliament on Thursday approved a nonbinding resolution for Google Inc. to be broken up into separate companies.
There is no immediate threat to Google from the vote, which amounts to little more than political posturing, because Parliament has no formal power over antitrust policy in the 28-member trade bloc.
But the vote signifies the increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the dominant role that Google, a U.S. technology titan, plays in Europe. The vote followed a separate move Wednesday to rein in the company by a European regulatory body that aims to protect the electronic privacy of European citizens.
Thursday's vote also could raise pressure on Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's recently installed competition commissioner, to speed up a decision on whether to lodge formal antitrust charges against Google in a long-running investigation. That inquiry, begun in 2010, concerns Google's dominant position in Europe's Internet search business and asks whether the company's search results favor other Google-related services and whether Google impedes its competitors' search-advertising platforms.
The vote Thursday was on a broader resolution on the digital economy that passed with 384 votes in favor, 174 against and 56 abstentions. The resolution, which broadly called on the European authorities to break down competitive barriers in digital commerce, was backed by large numbers of lawmakers from the European People's Party and the Socialists & Democrats, the two main political blocs in Parliament.
Vestager, a Danish free-market liberal who took office Nov. 1, replaced Joaquin Almunia, who initiated the antitrust investigation of Google and tried three times to settle with the company but abandoned those efforts after the company's competitors and other groups said the proposed settlement terms would be ineffective. Vestager has insisted on taking the necessary time before deciding on next steps in that antitrust case.
She also must decide whether to open a formal investigation into Google's Android mobile operating system. A preliminary inquiry, also begun under Almunia, has been considering whether Google uses Android to discriminate against non-Google applications.
Ricardo Cardoso, Vestager's spokesman, said after Thursday's parliamentary vote that she would not be swayed by the result. Antitrust efforts should be "independent from politics," so that Europe's "procedures are not put into question," Cardoso said.
The outcry against Google is nonetheless hard to ignore.
None of the deals offered by Almunia satisfied rivals and critics of Google, whose search engine, with about 90 percent of the market in some European Union countries, is even more dominant in Europe than it is in the United States. The lack of a settlement means Google could still face a fine of nearly $6 billion and restrictions on its freedom to do business in Europe if it is eventually found to have broken European Union competition laws.
The resolution approved Thursday addressed a number of issues concerning Europe's digital economy. The breakup proposal, which opponents to the resolution had sought to dilute or delete, did not attack Google directly, even though the company was widely assumed to be the target. Instead it called on Vestager's department "to consider proposals aimed at unbundling search engines from other commercial services as one potential long-term means" of introducing more competition into online search in Europe.
Among the proponents of tough antitrust action against Google in Europe are major American technology companies like Microsoft Corp. and Yelp Inc., as well as powerful German and French publishing groups that have formed a lobbying group called the Open Internet Project.
Lobbying over the Google case has increased as the stakes have risen for control of the digital economy.
The breakup language was introduced by Andreas Schwab, a German member of the European Parliament. Schwab is "of counsel" at the German law and lobbying firm CMS Hasche Sigle, which has represented some of the German publishing interests that have been most eager to curb Google, including the German Magazine Publishers association.
Schwab said he had not discussed the resolution with the law firm. Addressing Parliament late Wednesday to urge passage of his resolution, Schwab said he wanted to enable all businesses to "participate on an equal footing" in Europe's digital sector.
Evelyne Gebhardt, a Socialist lawmaker from Germany, told the European Parliament ahead of the vote that she supported the resolution "to make sure that our young entrepreneurs -- young people coming out of university who are building things, who have new ideas -- have an opportunity to give their services quite freely" on the Internet.
It is "high time" that the bloc's antitrust authority "came up with a result," Gebhardt said.
The run-up to the vote mobilized an international lobbying effort, with U.S. consumer advocates and Google's rivals supporting the resolution, while dozens of powerful members of Congress in Washington and Gov. Jerry Brown of California, where Google is based, strongly condemning the initiative.
Leaders of congressional trade committees warned that the vote could imperil negotiations over a trans-Atlantic trade pact, which the European Union has made a priority as part of its efforts to jump-start growth and create new jobs.
Some European lawmakers, including Kaja Kallas of Estonia, warned late Wednesday that the resolution was a wrongheaded effort aimed to protect vested interests in Europe.
"I am disappointed that discussion over this resolution has turned into an anti-Google debate," she said. "Many decision makers still see digital solutions as a threat, rather than an opportunity."
But that effort failed to head off the resolution during growing distrust of big U.S. technology companies like Google that many Europeans consider cavalier about citizens' privacy and too powerful to enable competitors, particularly in Germany, to gain a toehold.
A Section on 11/28/2014