<https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/international/google-european-un...> Europe’s resentment of the American technology giant Google reached a new noise level on Thursday as the European Parliament passed a nonbinding vote to break up the company. Although merely symbolic — the resolution carries no legal weight — the move came the day after a separate European body sought to further expand citizens’ “right to be forgotten” privacy protections against Google. Both moves are also playing out against the backdrop of a long-running investigation by the European authorities of Google, on which the European Union’s new antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, is still getting up to speed. A breakup of Google in Europe will almost certainly not happen, legal experts say. And whether any of the various policy moves afoot will ever significantly curtail the company’s business operations across the region is still too soon to gauge. Subscribe to With Interest Catch up and prep for the week ahead with this newsletter of the most important business insights, delivered Sundays. But taken together, the level of policy-making activity being devoted to the company signifies the growing antipathy to American technological dominance in the European Union even as its citizens grow ever more reliant on its gadgetry and conveniences. Not since European officials spent years seeking to rein in the powers of an earlier tech titan, Microsoft, has an American company drawn such scrutiny on this side of the Atlantic. European fears of American technology giants have been stoked in the last 18 months by the revelations of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, about American intelligence agencies’ spying activities and perceived easy access to the world’s tech infrastructure. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany publicly complained when it was discovered last year that her cellphone had most likely been tapped by American intelligence. In one sense, Thursday’s vote amounts to little more than political posturing because the Parliament has no formal power over antitrust policy in the 28 countries of the European Union. That power rests with the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm. Yet the vote could raise pressure on Ms. Vestager to speed a decision on whether to bring formal antitrust charges against Google in an investigation that began in 2010. That inquiry involves Google’s dominant position in Europe’s Internet search business and asks whether the company’s search results favor other Google-related services and hobble competing search advertising platforms. [...]