In Germany, Strong Words Over Google's Power

A trans-Atlantic war of words -- and profits -- over the future of the Internet heated up when the head of Germany’s largest publisher admitted that “we are afraid of Google” and suggested that European authorities were colluding with the company to develop a “business model that in less honorable circles would be called extortion.”

Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive officer of Axel Springer, lashed out after the Google chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, mounted a spirited defense of Google’s practices and charged that “heavy-handed regulation” in some places “risks creating an innovation desert in Europe” that would ultimately threaten its well-being. Schmidt’s remarks, published in the German media, were themselves a response to an attack by another German Internet entrepreneur, Robert M. Maier, who founded the Berlin start-up Visual Meta in 2008 and sold a majority stake to Springer in 2011, and published a long article titled “Fear of Google” on April 3. “We are afraid of Google,” Döpfner wrote. “I must say this so clearly and honestly since scarcely one of my colleagues dares to do this publicly. And as the biggest of the small fry, we must perhaps be the first to speak plainly in this debate.”