Matt Brittin, president of Google’s European operations, complained this week that EU officials “could be better informed than they are”. It might help if Google did not write “confidential” on every page of its contracts with mobile phonemakers.
It is another tough week in Brussels for Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Having been assailed over the “right to be forgotten” in search results, how it competes in online shopping and the tax it pays in Europe, it faces EU antitrust charges over its Android mobile software. With dominance of internet search comes a lot of bother.
In general, I sympathise with Mr Brittin. There are, as he says, “some places in Europe . . . where the first inclination is to protect the past from the future”. It is being harshly treated over how it displays shopping results and the right of European citizens to eliminate search links they dislike. But on Android — perhaps the most important case for Google’s future — he is wrong.