Reply #96: Google Pledges Europe Privacy Controls to Fight ‘Elephant’ Image

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http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-18/google-pledges-europe-privacy-controls-to-fight-elephant-image.html

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. is trying to rehabilitate its image in Europe after years of rankling regulators, artists, publishers and privacy advocates in the region.

The owner of the world’s largest search engine is pledging increased hiring, more respect for intellectual property and improved privacy safeguards to win over critics. The efforts appear to be working, with politicians including French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel softening their stances toward the Mountain View, California- based company.

“When an elephant enters a crystal room, you have to be cautious, and we realize that we’re an elephant now,” Carlo d’Asaro Biondo, the French-Italian head of Google’s southern European operations, said in an interview in Paris. The company had to change, or “long-term, we would have paid for it.”

Europe is home to some of Google’s most loyal customers. Its search engine had an 88 percent market share in March, compared to 66 percent in the U.S., where Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Bing are stronger competitors, according to comScore Inc. Governments have been less welcoming, with the European Union investigating Google’s advertising practices and Germany threatening a fine over the Street View mapping program.