Tag: google

The Motion Picture Association, representing the largest US film producers, has told EurActiv it is joining with the European film industry to pressure Google on piracy.

Closing the loopholes in tax laws that unfairly benefit Google must be clearly distinguished from the discussion of possible support to the ailing press, writes Jan Malinowski.

Silicon Valley is a concept that is hard to replicate, so Europeans should instead strive to build ecosystems for innovation that rely on investment, talent, leadership and risk, high-tech guru David Parekh tells EurActiv.

Joaquín Almunia, the EU's Competition Commissioner, has laid down an ultimatum for US search giant Google to meet competition concerns as both sides signalled a desire to avoid a repeat of tech giant Microsoft’s mammoth legal dispute with the EU executive.

Online social networks cannot be forced to block users from downloading songs illegally, as this would push up their costs and infringe on privacy, Europe's highest court said today (16 February), adding to a worldwide debate on internet policing.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social networking sites will support European citizens’ initiatives that will be launched starting 1 April, corporate representatives said during a conference in Brussels last week.

Google's planned purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. will not influence an ongoing antitrust probe into the Internet search engine, the EU's antitrust chief said yesterday (1 September).

Google this morning (28 June) learned it will be sued by a French company for  €295 million, in yet another clash between the company's search and advertising business and rival websites. 

Traditionally a market reserved for niche players, the solar sector is now drawing increasing interest from energy behemoths like General Electric and Total as well as unexpected new investors like Google.

Microsoft Corp. stepped up its rivalry with Google Inc. with a formal complaint to EU antitrust regulators, claiming Google systematically thwarts Internet search competition.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google, the company behind the world's number one Internet search engine, for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

If the European Commission has its way then all of Europe's cultural heritage will be online by 2016, in a move that could rival Google's burgeoning digital books business.

Google is once again under fire in the EU after several member states demanded more details about its 'Street View' service - a feature of Google's Maps service, which allows users to see live images of a given road and intersection, writes Andreas Geiger of Brussels lobbying firm Alber & Geiger.

EU regulators have reprimanded major search engines Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing for storing data search queries for too long and by so doing overlooking the bloc's Data Protection Directive. 

The European Commission has said that Google's Buzz is in line with the bloc's data protection guidelines, while 10 national regulators from Canada to the UK are demanding that Google must change the privacy controls of the social networking site.

The European Commission yesterday (23 February) asked Google to defend fresh antitrust complaints amid accusations that the search engine buries competitors' adverts in places that are less visible to users.

Google faces the final leg of a legal battle with an array of powerful opponents today (18 February) over a settlement that would give the search engine the right to digitise all English-language works in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.

The days of free online newspapers may be drawing to a close as major media owners announce their intention to impose stricter and higher pay barriers on their news services. And Europeans seem to be willing to pay for such services, according to a recent survey.

The EU has been busy scanning books and documents to improve citizens' access to culture and history, but its efforts have been overshadowed by Google's commercial push to digitise Europe's book heritage.

Google's project to digitise the world's book heritage has been welcomed by the EU Commission, but many questions have arisen regarding the potential monopolistic power of the US giant over access to digitised works, copyright, data protection and even censorship risks.

The European Commission is to hold a hearing in September for interested parties to comment on the impact on EU writers' rights of a deal struck with publishers by Google to make millions of books available online.

The European Commission yesterday (14 April) opened an infringement procedure against the UK regarding online behavioural adverts, which represent the new frontier in targeted advertising but raise substantial data protection issues.

The European Commission has cleared the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google, considering the deal "unlikely to have harmful effects on consumers". The decision was taken "exclusively" on the basis of competition principles, without taking into account privacy-related concerns falling under the competence of member states.

A request by Google to takeover DoubleClick, the world leader in online advertising, is fuelling speculation that the European Commission might open an investigation into the creation of a potential monopoly over on-line advertising by the internet search giant.