Citing a lack of competition in the search market, especially in Europe, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson called Monday for closer scrutiny of Google’s business by regulators.
News Corp. CEO Says Antitrust Probe of Google Could Be Warranted
At the same time, Robert Thomson praised CEO Sundar Pichai for being more willing to listen than his predecessors.
News Corp.
“I think that prospect needs to be studied,” he said at the DLD conference in Munich.
Given Google’s 90-plus-percent share of the European market, the company has special responsibilities and noted a lack of competition in the market, he said. News Corp. is among the formal complainants in the ongoing European Union antitrust case against the search giant.
This isn’t the first time Thomson has spoken out about Google’s potentially anti-competitive practices. A little over a year ago the CEO wrote to EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia, accusing the search giant as a “platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks.”
“The shining vision of Google’s founders has been replaced by a cynical management,” he said then.
Thomson today is more hopeful about Google’s attitude under CEO Sundar Pichai. The new CEO is fostering a new Google that is listening in a way it didn’t under past leaders.
“The word I think of with Google at the moment is optimism,” Thomson said.
News Corp. is the Rupert Murdoch-controlled company that publishes the Wall Street Journal and New York Post along with newspapers around the globe.
Google and News Corp. have been engaged in a war of words (and GIFs) over who is doing more lobbying of government.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
