Brussels investigates Google over allegations of search 'fixing'
The European Commission has launched an investigation into internet giant Google after allegations of anti-competitive search engine results 'fixing' by competitors.
The anti-trust probe will explore whether the firm has violated EU anti-trust rules. A trio of competitors, including Microsoft, who provide their own tailored search services, have alleged that Google has abused its market dominance by according preferential treatment to the results of its own products and lowered the ranking of others to crush rivals.
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Internet cafe: the commission says the probe should not be taken as a presumption of guilt (Photo: Lee Jordan)
The three, Ciao from Microsoft's search engine, Bing; British price comparison engine Foundem; and e-Justice, a French legal affairs search service, say that Google is pushing down their results in its ranking and favouring its own versions of such products.
The commission will also be probing whether contracts with the company's Ad-Sense offering, which serves up text-based avertisements to websites, limits the ability of firms to woo other ad services for their sites.
Brussels has the ability to slap fines of up to 10 percent of revenues if Google is found to be behaving as a monopolist.
The EU executive in the past has not shied away from handing out multi-billion fines to the likes of Intel and Microsoft.
However, the commission stressed that the move was only an investigation and that there should be no presumption of guilt on the part of Google.
"This initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of any infringements," said the commission in a statement. "It only signifies that the commission will conduct an in-depth investigation of the case as a matter of priority."
However, antitrust commissioner Joaquin Almunia told MEPs in Brussels on Tuesday (30 November) that as the company's share of the market was a whopping 90 percent, "We cannot ignore this, and we need to do our best to follow up this investigation."
Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, an industry lobby group whose members include Microsoft, E-Bay and Oracle, cheered the commission's decision to launch an enquiry.
"The number of smaller competitors discovering their search rankings have been manipulated continues to rise, particularly in niche areas, like local search, where Google has struggled to compete," he said.
However, Google for its part gives the impression of being very relaxed about the investigation.
The company says that search rankings are produced by computer algorithms and at no point do any humans interfere. The low ranking of Foundem for example, they say, is simply because it is a bad service.
