European Parliament May Propose Breaking Up Google

European politicians leery of Google's inescapable presence on the Internet may propose that EU regulators break up the company. The European Parliament is considering a draft motion that, while having no direct effect, may recommend that course of action to the continent's antitrust powers, Reuters and theFinancial Times reported Friday. Google has been under investigation for anticompetitive business tactics for some time in Europe. Reuters quoted a section of the draft motion saying that legislation "unbundling search engines from other commercial services" should be considered by the European Commission, the Euopean Union's actual lawmaking body. Critics of Google allege that the company uses its effective monopoly on search to advance its other products, such as Gmail and Google+, while stifling competitors by assigning them lower priority in results. Divorcing search functionality from Google's other businesses, as suggested in the parliamentary motion, would force results to be more objective. The motion is still in draft form, however, and has yet to be proposed, let alone voted on. Google declined to comment to NBC News on the motion.