Google threatened with break up by EU over monopoly fears

Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager expresses 'grave concerns' over search giant's dominant 91.5 per cent market share

'You get to be dominant and you get a special responsibility that you don’t destroy the already weakened competition' (AFP)

Google may ultimately need to be broken up to stop the tech company securing a monopoly over internet search, the EU has said.

Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she harboured "grave suspicions" about the Silicon Valley giant - which currently commands a 91.5 per cent share of Europe's search engine market - and said that ordering its fragmentation into smaller companies on anti-trust grounds may be the only way to ensure fair trading conditions.

"I think it is important to keep that question open and on the agenda,” Ms Vestager said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

"We are not there yet but it is important to keep an awakened eye."

Nicknamed "the Eurocrat Who Makes America Tremble" by Bloomberg, the Dane has built a formidable reputation on her willingness to challenge the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook since taking the job in 2014.

"There is no ban on success in Europe," she told The Telegraph.

"You get to be dominant and you get a special responsibility that you don’t destroy the already weakened competition.

"We have proven their dominance in search and we have found they have misused this dominance to promote themselves and diminish competitors."

Margrethe Vestager (AP)

This last remark referred to the European Commission (EC) fining Google €2.42bn (£2.1bn) last year for manipulating shopping search results to favour its own services.

"This is not competition on the merits and is illegal under EU antitrust rules," Ms Vestager said at the time.

The EC is meanwhile reportedly drafting new regulations ordering search providers, online retailers and app stores to be more transparent about how their algorithms rank search results.

The behaviour of the world's leading tech firms remains under close scrutiny at present following the revelations about Cambridge Analytica's harvesting of Facebook data for political ends.