BRUSSELS ¨C When EU politicians call for the breakup of Google, it can sound like sour grapes, the anti-American backlash of an aging continent envious and fearful of the wealth and power of young U.S. tech giants.
But should any American scoff at Thursday¡¯s nonbinding vote in the European Parliament, when lawmakers urged regulators to get tough with the search engine Goliath, they should know that behind the EU anti-trust probe of Google stand not only Europeans but U.S. competitors.
Indeed, to many in Brussels it is Google¡¯s fellow Americans, such as Microsoft, Expedia and TripAdvisor, whose complaints and big money lobbying have driven a 4-year-old investigation by the European Commission into whether Google abuses its dominance of Internet searches to push favored websites.
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