In the last months of the current European Commission, Google is in deep trouble. Its effort to reach an antitrust deal with Joaquín Almunia, the competition commissioner who is to be succeeded by Margrethe Vestager, is failing amid an outcry from politicians and rivals that it is being let off the hook.

“Google needs to pay the bill for its abuse of its dominant position,” says Olivier Sichel, chief executive of French shopping comparison group LeGuide and co-founder of the anti-Google Open Internet Project. He suggests a fine of up to $7bn would be justified – “not far off what BNP Paribas had to pay to the US government”.

Google is the new Microsoft: a US technology company pursued by the EU for allegedly being over-mighty and wielding power unfairly. The similarities with Microsoft’s earlier efforts to tie its Internet Explorer browser into Windows are “as disturbing as they are remarkable”, according to BEUC, the European consumers’ group.