Google turns on the charm in Europe

Google needs more friends in Europe.

That message was brought home with a vengeance earlier this month when the European Commission lodged an antitrust complaint against the internet search giant and started a second investigation into its Android mobile operating system.

But Google privately woke up to the fact that it needed to change the way it was operating in Europe last summer, according to Carlo D'Asaro Biondo, the French-Italian executive leading the group's new charm offensive.

"We realised in the last years we had a problem," he says.

In Mr D'Asaro Biondo's analysis, Google should have offered a helping hand to all kinds of European industries as the digital world put increasing pressure on their business models. That did not happen.

"In Europe we were not organised to value [partnerships]," he says. "We were more organised to sell advertising."

That neglect has exacted a high price. A series of running battles with the media and entertainment industries over copyright issues has expanded into wider competition complaints, resulting in this month's action in Brussels.

Now, with the digital world encroaching far beyond media and communications, anxiety about Google's influence - whether it is friend or foe of industries from healthcare to automobiles - is rising.

"Maybe we didn't make enough effort to understand our partners . . . in developing relationships," says Mr D'Asaro Biondo, who was speaking in his first extended interview since he was handed the new job of managing European strategic relationships in February.

Now he has the task of convincing companies in other industries that Google is a reliable ally, rather than the leader of a digital invasion from Silicon Valley bent on wiping them out.

Mr D'Asaro Biondo says he plans to start by telling other industries why they have nothing to fear as Google expands into new markets.

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"We can't develop things alone to replace them, I don't believe in that. Developing a car requires skills and know-how that we don't have," he argues.

Google would not want to become a carmaker in its own right, for instance, he says, because "it would stop innovation because instead of focusing on what we do, we would have to try to learn things we don't know".

His comments at times sound as though they run counter to the huge ambition emanating from the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, as its eyes new markets far beyond internet search.

But in the version of Google that Mr D'Asaro Biondo is bringing to would-be partners in Europe, the company's horizons sound far more limited. He says he will become a champion for ideas developed with partners in Europe, taking them back to Mountain View to help shape the company's global product development.

Mr D'Asaro Biondo's unenviable first task will be to persuade Europe's news publishers - who have long counted among the company's strongest critics - that it has their interests at heart.

< > The challenge extends beyond news publishers to other "old media" companies trying to make money online. TV executives such as Bertelsmann's Thomas Rabe, for instance, grumble that the economics of platforms such as Google's YouTube simply do not generate enough money for broadcasters.

"I think the model is going to work for everybody over time because the internet grows and YouTube grows," counters Mr D'Asaro Biondo.

One of his main overtures involves Android, the most widely used smartphone operating system. Linking a system that is on 85 per cent of smartphones with new devices such as watches, glasses, cars and TVs creates opportunities for various industries to develop stronger links with their customers.

"Making those machines speak together is an incredible development of services. There's huge value for the ecosystem," he says.

The focus on Android comes in the shadow of a new antitrust investigation into the operating system in Brussels. Mr D'Asaro Biondo claims, though, that the regulatory challenge would not slow the company's Android ambitions.

Ultimately, his message to Google detractors is straightforward: "I can make the cake bigger for everybody. If we can look each other in the eye with respect, I think we can do incredible things in Europe."

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