In the matter of the Google antitrust case in Europe, the political and media battle matters as much as the strictly legal one. This week, we saw a number of key moves on the part of the search giant, news items that are sure to affect the public’s view of the case, and some decisions by Google’s competitors that will do the same:
• A new report from tech.eu on the exits of European technology firms reveals in stark statistical terms what the continent had known for some time: American dollars play a critical role in the European tech ecosystem. In 2014, out of 332 successful European technology company acquisitions, 122 occurred because American firms chose to buy European ones. Germany came in a distant second, with 40 acquisitions of European tech companies. The American company responsible for the most acquisitions was none other than Google. The scrutinized search giant acquired eight European companies in 2014.
• Yelp’s public policy director had this to say to Reuters: “It’s been clear from our meetings that U.S.-based companies have helped lead the charge by providing substantive evidence of Google’s harm to consumers.” In other words, U.S.-based companies — unable to lodge similar lawsuits on American soil — have taken their fight to Europe. Expedia, TripAdvisor, Nextag, and Microsoft are among the U.S. complainants.
• Google plans to spend $163 million to establish the Digital News Initiative. The fund will enabled Google to work directly with eight European publishers, including, among others, the Financial Times and El Pais. Speaking in London, Carlo D’Asaro Biondo, Google’s president of Strategic Partnerships, Europe, said: “I firmly believe that Google has always wanted to be a friend and partner to the news industry, but I also accept we’ve made some mistakes along the way. We are a teenage ‘tech’ company after all! … We recognize that technology companies and news organizations are part of the same information ecosystem and we want to play our part in the common fight to find more sustainable models for news.” Which is, of course, a response to the on-going challenge Europe has with Google News — a product it can’t live with, but can’t seem to live without. The Axel Springer group, one of Google’s fiercest critics among media companies in Europe, was noticeably left off the list of grantees for the Digital News Initiative.
• Google joined Facebook, Microsoft and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to press lawmakers to extend American privacy protections to Europeans. Writing in support of the Judicial Redress Act of 2015, H.R. 1428, the trade associations and companies hope that passage of the bill would help address what they see as “a significant erosion of global public trust in both the U.S. government and the U.S. technology sector.” For U.S. tech and telecom companies, the Edward Snowden disclosures has real business costs, which some have estimated in the tens of billions in lost contracts and business. Repairing trust in the post-Snowden world could have direct and lasting impacts on the bottom line of more than a few U.S. firms.
• Ebay rejected an initial report by the Financial Times that suggested that Ebay stood behind Google in its antitrust case against the EU. Comments by John Donahoe led some to believe that Ebay had quietly signaled its support of Google, but the online auction house later seemed to hint that its sympathies lie with the EU: “While the specific complaint against Google has not been made public, we believe the Commission is investigating important concerns with the Internet ecosystem.”
Little has emerged about the case specifically, outside of what we saw from European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s American tour and the full text of the 70,000 complaint. But look for new details to emerge soon, as Google prepares its response to a case that will almost certainly have global implications for its business and the U.S. tech sector.
