Europe's new antitrust chief said on Tuesday that she needed more time to decide on the next step of the investigation into Google, as the alleged anti-competitive practices are complicated and the inverstigations should be be narrowed to real competition problems. Speaking today at the European parliament, European Competition Commissioner Margrathe Vestager said that the sheer amount of data controlled by Google gives rise to a series of societal challenges, with privacy being one of the most pressing concerns and media pluralism being another.

"Not all of these challenges are primarily economic in nature and not all of them are competition related. So many of the Google related concerns voiced in the public debate cannot be addressed in our investigations into the company’s alleged anti-competitive practices. We will have to limit ourselves to what we identify as competition problems, " she said.

"To decide how to take our investigations forward, I need to know what those most directly affected by the practices in question have to say. I need to have a representative sample of views of those concerned," Vestager added.

"The issues at stake in our investigations have a big potential impact on many players, they are multifaceted and complex. I will therefore need some time to decide on the next steps."