Germany has been in some ways the epicenter of Google criticism in Europe. And that criticism is personified in the form of the new European Commissioner for the Digital Economy, Günther Oettinger, who just took office November 1.
Oettinger whose precise role and responsibilities are not totally set, given some reorganization going on in the EU bureaucracy, is what might be called a “Google hawk.” He seems to be eager to rein in the company and even extract revenue from Google.
There’s clearly a punitive undercurrent in his comments. Indeed, an article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that he would promote and seek to impose a German-style “ancillary copyright” tax on Google across the EU:
Mr. Oettinger floated various anti-Google ideas . . . One of these is a reform to existing copyright laws specifically targeting the tech company, in what amounts to an EU-wide “Google tax.” “If Google takes intellectual property from the EU and works with it, the EU can protect this property and can demand a charge for it,” Mr. Oettinger told the daily Handelsblatt, adding that such a law could be in place by 2016.
The implementation of the ancillary copyright law in Germany has been a disaster for German publishers, who promoted the law to German parliamentarians. It has totally backfired against them.
Now Spain has passed a similar anti-Google copyright law, despite the German example, that will likely have a similarly negative impact on its sponsoring Spanish publishers.
Germany’s Oettinger also wants to see a much tougher settlement with (or action against) Google in the search antitrust matter. However Oettinger is not the EU Competition Commissioner. That’s Margrethe Vestager, Denmark’s former economy minister. She has taken a more moderate line, saying that she would like the Google search case to be resolved quickly.
We’ll see if she can succeed in that where her predecessor Joaquín Almunia failed.
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