Matthew Lynn's London Eye: Google is nowhere near Europes biggest problem

The European continent is slipping into deflation. Unemployment is rising relentlessly. A debt crisis is ticking explosive underneath countries such as Italy and Spain. Talented young people are migrating in the search for work. Extremist parties of the right and left are rising in the polls as years of depression take their toll.

It is not exactly hard to list the economic challenges facing the European Union right now.

But not to worry, the European Union (EU) is about to fix everything. How? By breaking up Google GOOG, -0.49% .

The European Parliament is limbering up for a fight with the search giant, attacking its dominance of the internet. It argues that is unfairly stifling the growth of home-grown tech start-ups.

Schwab Center for Financial Research's Kathy Jones joins MoneyBeat and explains why the U.S. dollar will likely continue to rise in 2015 and how investors should respond. Photo: Getty.

Nonsense. There is no serious evidence to suggest that the power of Google is holding back the European economy and certainly not compared to the deadening weight of red tape and taxes that government imposes.

The EU should stop worrying about a few American web giants and start working to fix its own problems.

The European attack on Google has been gathering strength for some time. The EU has already been investigating the companys market position for years, probing whether it has become too powerful, whether it discriminates against rivals, and if so what can be done.

Now the European Parliament looks poised to take that a step further, with votes scheduled on whether a search engine should be allowed to engage in other commercial activities. If that was passed, then Google would in effect have to be broken up. If it was broken up in Europe, then not only would that damage the company in itself the EU, after all, despite its troubles, remains the biggest economic bloc in the world but it would also set a troubling precedent in the rest of the world. Google, at least as we know it, might well be finished.

The European attack has affected Googles shares, which closed Tuesday at around $540 a share, versus about $600 a share in August.

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Matthew Lynn's London Eye: Google is nowhere near Europes biggest problem

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