Google has a problem in China. It may be headed for a bigger one in Europe.So far, no one has accused European governments of cyberattacks like those that Google says it has suffered in China. But on issues from privacy to copyright protection to the dominance of Google’s Internet search engine, clashes with European lawmakers, regulators and consumer advocates are escalating.Europe matters to Google and its shareholders — potentially more than China. For nowhere else in the world is the company as powerful and as potentially vulnerable. Across most of Europe, Google is by far the biggest search engine, with a substantially bigger market share than in the United States. In a single European country, Britain, Google has roughly 10 times its estimated sales in China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/technology/companies/02google.html
Europe Looms as Major Battleground for Google
Google has a problem in China. It may be headed for a bigger one in Europe. So far, no one has accused European governments of cyberattacks like those that Google says it has suffered in China. But on issues from privacy to copyright protection to the dominance of Google’s Internet search engine, clashes with European lawmakers, regulators and consumer advocates are escalating.