EU Parliament Passes Measure to Break Up Google in Symbolic Vote

Europe’s resentment of the American technology giant Google reached a new noise level as the European Parliament passed a nonbinding vote to break up the company. Although merely symbolic -- the resolution carries no legal weight -- the move came the day after a separate European body sought to further expand citizens’ “right to be forgotten” privacy protections against Google.

Both moves are also playing out against the backdrop of a long-running investigation by the European authorities of Google, on which the European Union’s new antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, is still getting up to speed. A breakup of Google in Europe will almost certainly not happen, legal experts say. And whether any of the various policy moves afoot will ever significantly curtail the company’s business operations across the region is still too soon to gauge. But taken together, the level of policy-making activity being devoted to the company signifies the growing antipathy to American technological dominance in the European Union even as its citizens grow ever more reliant on its gadgetry and conveniences.