SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The European Parliament is preparing to call for a break-up of Google Inc that would separate its search services from its other businesses, the Financial Times on Friday cited a draft motion as saying.
European regulators are increasingly concerned about Google's and other American companies' growing dominance of the Internet industry, and have sought ways to curb Google's perceived power. A public call for a break-up would be the most far-reaching action proposed.
"Unbundling (of) search engines from other commercial services" should be considered as a solution to Google's dominance, the FT cited the draft motion as saying.
Parliament lacks the authority to break up corporations, but a public motion will step up the pressure on the European Commission to act.
In November, Europe's new antitrust chief said she would take some time to decide on the next step of a four-year-long investigation into the Internet search leader, after her predecessor had scrapped a proposed settlement with the company.
European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who took over from Joaquin Almunia on Nov. 1, said she would take a representative sample of views from parties involved in the case and check on latest industry developments before taking any action.
Rivals such as Yelp Inc, most of them significantly smaller than Google, argue that the company is squeezing them out in Internet search results.
(Reporting by Edwin Chan and Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by James Dalgleish)