The government strongly supports the European Commission's proposed regulation that will provide a common legal framework for unbundling from the end of the year.
One draft calls for "unbundling search engines from other commercial services" to ensure a level playing field for European companies and consumers.
In the past decade, media businesses, from music to newspapers, have suffered from the impact of unbundling.
Microsoft has argued that unbundling Media Player from Windows would prevent the operating system from working properly.
The iTunes store, the industry's attempt, in partnership with Apple, to build a digital record shop, opened in 2003 to sell downloads, but that didn't alter the downward trajectory; indeed, by unbundling tracks from the album, so that buyers could cherry-pick their favorite songs, Apple arguably hastened the decline.
IBM responded by unbundling hardware from software, settling some private antitrust suits, pursuing others and battling the feds.
It's also worth noting that more big companies seem to be keen on unbundling functionality from more centralized apps, making multiple pieces of software designed for a specific purpose instead.
For example, the NHSO outsourced open heart surgery and coronary artery bypass grafting to private hospitals with spare capacity [ 6]; and boosted cataract surgery by unbundling it from the DRG system and "providing an attractive fee schedule and incentives to physicians" (KI 10, implementer).
And by unbundling the paper from the journal, as last.fm had let music fans unbundle songs from albums, they felt like they were kicking a brick out of the outmoded publishing infrastructure.
It goes on to call on the European Commission "to enforce EU competition rules decisively" in such a way that would "ensure remedies that truly benefit consumers, internet users and online businesses," and "to consider proposals aimed at unbundling search engines from other commercial services as one potential long-term means of achieving the aforementioned aims".
By unbundling Google apps from Android, the EU is offering smartphone manufacturers an opportunity.
