We recognize that innovation improves our lives, but we want a level playing field.
— Ramon Tremosa i Balcells, a European Parliament lawmaker from Spain who backed the resolution calling for a breakup of Google. The Wall Street Journal writes that as Europe feels increasingly threatened by the success — or dominance — of American tech companies, it is causing bigger and bigger headaches for those companies.
The call for the breakup of Google is just one example. There s also the U.K. s proposed Google tax, a 25 percent tax on profit made in the U.K. but then is shifted elsewhere. Another high-profile issue: Europe s right to be forgotten ruling, which centers on Europeans strong views on the right to privacy and requires Google and other search engines to scrub search results on a case-by-case basis. (Recently, there have even been calls to extend that ruling to the companies search websites outside Europe.) And the revelations about American government spying using Internet giants technology hasn t helped, either.
Quartz notes that in France, the term GAFA, which is an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, is sometimes used to express resentment over these companies influence.
Besides Europe s concern about American tech companies effect on its economy, the Journal cites two other big themes that surround the Europeans discontent: The region s proclivity for regulation vs. Silicon Valley s disdain for it, and what is effectively a tug of war for control of the Internet.
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