Europe Goes After Google: Top Stories for Wednesday

European Union regulators charged Google with using its dominant position in search to steer users to its own services. The "statement of objections," the most significant since Microsoft faced anti-trust charges 10 years ago, put Google in jeopardy of billions of dollars in fines. "Dominant companies have a responsibility not to abuse their market position either in the market where they are dominant or in neighboring markets,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager told a news conference. “This is about consumers getting the best possible results of their query.” Win or lose, Google will be tied in years of litigation — the conflict has already been bubbling for years and has eluded three attempts to settle. But Google is talking optimistic. In a memo to employees obtained by <re-code>, Google said it had "a very strong case, with especially good arguments when it comes to better services for users and increased competition." But wait — there's more! The EU Commission also opened a separate probe into Android, the mobile operating system that powers more than 80% of the world's smartphones.

*** A "wave of protests" is planned in 200 cities by low-wage workers, led by some of the 95% of McDonald's employees — those who work for franchisees — who aren't covered by the company's plan to raise their minimum wages, Steven Greenhouse writes for The Guardian. The benefit of the doubt: McDonald's April pay initiative for people who work in company owned-and-operated locations was a noble step, perhaps even a tangible way to pressure franchise owners to follow suit. But in the short term it has created the most clear-cut case of income inequality imaginable: People doing identical work for same company earning different wages.

*** Eight of the top 10 US employers now use "personality" tests, which aim to lower the cost of recruitment and identify "standout" prospects, Lauren Webber reports for The Wall Street Journal. The were first developed in the 1940s and fell out of favor in the 1960s but have crept back in the hiring process. Now, Webber writes, "never have such tests been deployed so widely at companies across the U.S."

These tests have, in effect, raised the bar for U.S. job seekers: With more companies holding an alleged formula for workplace success, fewer are willing to take a chance on anyone who doesn’t measure up.

Proponents argue that "statistical modeling and better computing power now give employers a choice of customized assessments that, in a single test, can appraise everything from technical and communication skills to personality and whether a candidate is a good match with a workplace’s culture  — even compatibility with a particular work team." Of course, there is a counter argument. “Predicting what humans will do is really frigging hard,” says Charles Handler, whose company advises hiring managers how to use these tests.

*** About 200 Samsung employees basically work for Apple. Samsung may be a bitter rival in the handset business, but Apple is its biggest customer for components. Now, Jungah Lee reports for Bloomberg, Samsung is creating a stand-alone unit "of about 200 employees working exclusively on screens for Apple Inc. products as the world’s biggest technology companies strengthen business ties." The improved relationship puts Samsung in a position to benefit from a successful new product line — the Apple Watch. Samsung, which lost a bit of luster when Apple tied it for smartphone sales in the last quarter of 2014, hasn't given up on handsets, of course. Its new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6, launched last Friday. You might have missed the news, which was buried by the launch of — Apple Watch.

*** The New York Federal Reserve Bank is bulking up its Chicago satellite office, "wary that a natural disaster or other eventuality could shut down its market operations as it approaches an interest rate hike," Jonathan Spicer reports in an exclusive for Reuters. The backup plan is similar to one employed after the 9/11 attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center in the financial district of Manhattan.

The satellite office in the Midwest readies the New York Fed for perhaps the most delicate U.S. interest-rate hike ever. With rates having been near zero for more than six years, and markets flooded with reserves, the Fed will rely on an array of new tools to help it tighten policy, likely later this year.

Spicer's sources told him cyber attack contingency was part of the strategy. But the main concern was to avoid chaos wrought by a natural disaster. The financial district lost power and suffered flooding from Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

**** Nokia has agreed to purchase Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 billion, positioning the company to become "the largest maker of mobile phone network equipment in the world, ahead of Ericsson and Huawei," writes Steve Dent at Engadget. Included in the deal is the sourdough starter for the entire communications industry: Bell Labs. That's quite a trajectory for the Finnish company many left for dead — including former CEO Stephen Elop, whose "burning platform" memo cratered Nokia's smartphone sales in 2012 and who himself left Nokia for Microsoft with the $7.2 billion sale of its handset division.

*** A 7% growth rate would be the envy of almost any economy, but for China, it's a slowdown. The Q1 growth figure, the second-lowest growth since 2001, "affords Beijing little cushion in hitting its 7% annual growth target," writes Mark Mangier in The Wall Street Journal. Growth in industrial production, fixed asset investment and retail sales all "decelerated" in March. Housing sales also declined. All of which "economists say could prompt Beijing to act further."