{"id":22365,"date":"2017-11-15T16:11:58","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T21:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/how-google-can-rebuild-trust-in-emea\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T16:11:58","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T21:11:58","slug":"how-google-can-rebuild-trust-in-emea","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/how-google-can-rebuild-trust-in-emea\/","title":{"rendered":"How Google Can Rebuild Trust in EMEA"},"content":{"rendered":"

EMEA asks tech for some space<\/strong><\/p>\n

In June of 2017, the European Union slapped a record-breaking fine of \u20ac2.42bn on Google for violating anti-trust law and promoting its own price comparison service, leading critics to accuse the EU of bias against US firms [1]. This was one of multiple fines foisted upon tech companies by the EU within the past decade, which previously included a \u20ac13bn fine on Apple, a \u20ac1.2bn fine on Microsoft, and a \u20ac1.1bn fine on Intel for various antitrust and collusion allegations.<\/p>\n

While high tech\u2019s influence and impact on other industries have been growing significantly in recent decades, creating value and optimizing the lives of millions, it has also experienced increasing resistance and withdrawal from certain populations as a result of growing isolationist tensions. As noted in the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, \u201cglobalization is now showing signs of retreat\u201d, and this phenomenon is experienced especially prominently by tech in EMEA [2].<\/p>\n

Isolationist political movements on international trade policies should be of massive concern (and already are) to Google. This growing mistrust of high tech and Google in particular will cause forced product changes to avoid additional fines, launches of less effective versions of new digital products within EMEA, and as a result will massively reduce the supply and flow of customer search data that is core to Google\u2019s profitability.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

What Google is doing now <\/strong><\/p>\n

To address this growing concern, Google\u2019s management made massive changes to their product in Europe, launched a brand-love-building marketing campaign, and continued to remove content requested through their \u201cright to be forgotten\u201d process [3]. After taking a few steps forward, Google has taken a few steps back in an attempt to regain the trust it has lost within the region.<\/p>\n

In the medium term, Google is focusing efforts on cooperating with new European regulation going into effect in the future. In particular, the company is working to support the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), whose primary objective lies in in \u201cunifying data protection rules across Europe, strengthening the rights of EU citizens and placing new obligations on all organisations that offer goods and services online\u201d [4]. This is an effort to present a joint front with European governmental bodies and mollify EU citizen fears about consumer control over their data and security. The goal is to continue providing the world\u2019s information in an organized way while driving personalized search and ad results using data minded from consumers \u2013 but only as much as each person is willing to provide. It has yet to be seen how effective this will be, as European culture has traditionally been more resistant to the large-scale data scraping that Americans have come to be more tolerant of in exchange for free services. Google is heavily dependent on this continuous data flow from consumers, so their primary goal in Europe must be for users to continue to use their services. This can only be achieved through regaining trust.<\/p>\n

Google has also dedicated resources to encourage digital literacy in Europe [5]. This is an effort to fill the digital skills gap and to increase the population\u2019s understanding of technology. An additional benefit to this program will benefit Google in that it will also build brand trust.<\/p>\n