EU: German minister aims to escalate crackdown on Google

Germany’s justice minister has called for reform of European competition law to make it easier for authorities to crack down on Google, in a further sign of the deteriorating relationship between Berlin and Silicon Valley.

Heiko Maas said antitrust rules provided “little leverage for dealing with Google’s market dominance” and had to change. European competition law needed to be rewritten “to apportion a bigger role to consumer protection”, he added.

His comments come against the backdrop of repeated clashes between big US technology firms on the one hand and Brussels and Berlin on the other over issues ranging from competition and tax to online privacy.

Mr Maas said Google had more than 95 per cent of the German search market, yet “we still don’t know what criteria it uses to rank its search results” and whether it favoured its own services.

He said he used Google’s search engine all the time, “but I would like objective results, and not results that first and foremost serve Google’s commercial interests”.

Full Content: Financial Times

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