In a move whose bark is worse than its bite, the European Parliament on Thursday approved a resolution suggesting one way to address Google's dominance is by splitting the company's search business from its other operations.
The nonbinding resolution calls upon the European Commission, whose competition division has been scrutinizing Google's search dominance since 2010, "to consider proposals aimed at unbundling search engines from other commercial services." That unbundling could separate Google services such as flight search, hotel reservations and shopping comparison from the company's search results.
The vote -- 384 in favor and 174 opposed -- sends a message of disapproval from nine time zones west toward Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. But it doesn't actually mean any big changes for Google.
Even Thomas Vinje, a lawyer with Clifford Chance who represents Google search competitors in a consortium called FairSearch, is reluctant to read much into the vote.
"The whole thing is a bit blown out of proportion," Vinje said. "The resolution doesn't call for a breakup, and voting up or down doesn't actually vote for or against that proposition."
Still, it's a new indication that last decade's consumer excitement about Google's technological achievements is now tempered by governmental displeasure at Google's business might.
Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment..
The resolution doesn't mention Google by name, but it's clearly the big target, especially given the European Commission's investigation since 2010 of Google's search dominance. Google has an overwhelming share of the markets for online search and the profitable search ads that come with them -- Vinje puts the figure at more than 95 percent in Europe, significantly higher than in the US. Google is using that considerable search-ad revenue to fund its expansion into other businesses, and it can use search results to promote those new businesses.