Germany is mulling stricter regulation of Google and other search providers, a spokesman in Berlin said Friday.
US-based Google has been heavily criticized by major German media groups which have requested a share of revenues from news searches.
It has also faced a European Union inquiry since 2010 into whether it discriminates against competitors.
“The Economics Ministry is studying whether, over and above existing competition laws, consideration should be given to integrating regulation of search-engine access into the general regime of network neutrality at the European level,” said Stefan Rouenhoff.
He spoke hours after his minister, Sigmar Gabriel, published an article in a national newspaper calling for “unrestricted data capitalism to be restrained and tamed.” He suggested in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Google could be split into its parts as a last resort if nothing else stopped it.
Germany’s competition authority, the Federal Cartel Office, responded cautiously. Its president, Andreas Mundt, said Google had already made significant concessions to the European Commission in an inquiry due to end in a few weeks.
“What’s forbidden is not that a company is big, but abuse of dominant market position,” he said.
A European Court of Justice ruling on Monday which obliges Google to “forget” outdated personal data has been praised by most German politicians, although it has dismayed media and web entrepreneurs elsewhere, who say it may be impracticable.
Asked by reporters to explain Gabriel’s break-up proposal, Rouenhoff conceded it would be difficult for the EU to break up a US firm.
“There is a global dimension here,” he said. “There’s a question of whether it’s implementable, and it would drag out over time.” Last month, the chief of Springer, Germany’s biggest newspaper group, accused Google of being a global monopoly. “We are scared of its power,” wrote Mathias Doepfner in an opinion article.