German official mulls breaking up Google (opens in new tab)

(cnbc.com)

7 pointswhoismua11y ago4 comments

4 comments

Breaking up MS I could understand--they were in a dominant position largely through questionable legal tactics involving strongarming OEMs to block them from distributing competing operating systems. But Google? They're in a dominant position because nobody else is as good at helping people Google things.

cpncrunch11y ago

I keep trying duckduckgo and other search engines, but they all still suck compared to google. Bing isn't too bad, but still not as good as google.

It seems that google is just successful because they have a good product. Therefore we want to break them up? That doesn't make any sense.

mark_l_watson11y ago

How would a German official break up Google? Perhaps Germany could bar them from supporting users (or products :-) in Germany, but in that bad case scenario, Google would just lose some small fraction of its business.

whoismuaOP11y ago

How would a German official break up Google?

Search separate from everything else.

but in that bad case scenario, Google would just lose some small fraction of its business.

Germany is in EU, so Google would risk losing roughly 50% of their business. But not really, in theory you could see "Baby Googles" being setup with different properties. Will they stand a chance on their own without being thrust on top of Google Search? Who knows

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