Google has been hit by a perfect storm in Europe.
In Italy, a court has convicted three Google executives of privacy violations because they didn't act quickly enough to pull down an online video showing an autistic boy getting abused. Google claims the convictions breach the principles of Internet freedom and in any case, it's impossible for providers to pre-screen thousands of hours of footage uploaded every day onto sites like YouTube. Google will appeal and we can expect this case to get plenty more coverage.
Adding to Google's woes, we have the Financial Times reporting that the European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Google's search engine and its search-advertising service. This follows complaints by companies, including one (surprise, surprise) from Microsoft alleging that Google's algorithm which ranks various outfits is giving some unfairly low rankings.
As with the Italian court case, one would expect Google to fight this vigorously.
BusinessWeek points out that Google is already facing antitrust action in Germany and the French government wants to tax revenues from advertising.
This is the story of Google's growing pains. Google will get through this as it has the financial clout to fight these battles. But as Toyota has now discovered, rapid growth can be unhealthy. The question is whether it will do a Toyota in the future.
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