Google Inc. (GOOG): Quick Hits from France, Germany

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) – one of the top stock plays among equity hedge funds we track – has been making news in Europe ad infinitum over various privacy, security and antitrust issues. Google has been working in several countries throughout the European Union – attorneys on one hand, lobbyists on the other – in order to manage its business model around the rather stringent privacy protection and antitrust regulations in the EU. Friday, Google is part of some news coming out of two countries – as it will be called to the carpet in France, and the company celebrates a victory in Germany in the middle of a legislative process.

In the first report, the French National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) is not very happy with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), and is reporting that it will ask executives to explain itself as it charges that Google has not followed through on recommended privacy protection policy changes. Last year, Google merged all of its user information databases from its various online web site properties and created a single master database, which French officials say violate its recommended policy changes. By October of last year, the French officials as well as Britain’s information commissioner gave Google four months to change the policy or face legal action. Now, the term “repressive action” is being mentioned. There is no legal dictionary readily available to determine what that means.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) contends that its changes are compliant with European law. A spokesman said, “Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the CNIL throughout this process and will continue to do so going forward.”

Next door, in Germany, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) seems to have sprayed water on copyright law.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been working the halls of Parliament in Germany, lobbying hard against a copyright-protection law. Google’s work has cleared an initial step, as the lower house of Parliament narrowly approved a “watered-down” version of a copyright law, which allows search engine like Google to display single words or very short snippets of news articles in their search results without having to pay royalties for showing the content. The initial push was to essentially force search engines to pay these news organizations to show snippets or summaries of stories, because these organizations claimed that showing those samples would have discouraged click-throughs and traffic and would have lost money.

The bill passed the lower house by a 293-243 vote, but is expected to face some serious resistance in the upper house.

What do you think? Is Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in trouble in France, and can it massage this new copyright bill through the German Parliament? How do you think either of these items will affect Google’s influence and market share in Europe? We’d like your thoughts in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.

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