EC extends antitrust case against Google

The European Commission has extended the antitrust case against Google by adding casework that was under review by German authorities. The Commission takes on two additional cases that were commenced after complaints from an online mapping company and a group of newspaper and magazine publisher.

The scope of the case remains the same: the Commission will review Google’s operations to ascertain that the company adheres to the principle of search neutrality and does not unjustly promote their own results over others. As Google continuously expands its range of services, Google’s search results may list their own services as well as competing services.

Adding the German casework provides the case with extra evidence for the Commission to base its judgement on.

The EC announced the start of their antitrust investigation a few weeks ago upon receiving complaints from several price comparison sites (vertically integrated search engines) that felt that Google unjustly favoured its own price comparison services when displaying results.

The German publishers took a similar complaint to the German cartel office last year. In a statement, they said: “We appreciate that the E.C. is now investigating the case as it could be one of the most important topics for the digital press in the coming years. From our point of view Google is no longer a mere search engine but filling the result pages with more and more own content. Thus Google is no longer an intermediary but a direct competitor.”

From Google’s perspective, the changes are mostly procedural: the contents of the case remains the same. It is only a different body that conducts the investigation.

Source: New York Times