Anti-Google rhetoric heats up in Germany amid threats of a break-up

Things aren't looking positive for Google in Europe. After a high-profile judicial setback last week — in which a court found that Europeans can now request that information about them be 'forgotten' by the search engine— some politicians from the continent's largest economy are heating up the debate.

In a lengthy editorial in the daily newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung last week, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany's current minister for economic affairs, painted a borderline Big Brother picture of the search engine. Because Google tracks and maintains a huge amount of data, Gabriel wrote, "the seemingly harmless miniature machine in the inside pocket of our suits and jackets has developed a life of its own".