The EU launches investigation into Google
"Abuse of dominant position"
The investigation by the Antitrust lot of complaints from some competing engines. That, according to the indictment, would be penalized in search results both free and fee. Mountain View: "Ready to work"
BRUSSELS - Google ends up in the crosshairs of the European Union Antitrust. The European body of control over the competition decided to open a formal investigation to see if the most popular website in the world has violated the rules in force in the Old Continent. The charge is "abuse of dominant position in search engines."Everything clicks as a result of instances presented in Brussels by rival groups, starting with Microsoft that has moved through its subsidiary Hello, portal in 2008 and noted that he had raised criticisms of Google's business practices. Allegations were received from two other operators, but on niche sectors, a French website of legal documents (ejustice.fr) and a price comparison portal UK (Foundem). Already last February, the European Commission had said that it would examine these complaints, while in recent years on various events imposed antitrust fines, Microsoft and Intel also weighed in, again for abuse of dominant positions.
Group Mountain View is accused of their competitors in the results of Free research, and advertisements by third parties that are evident in the top and right on the results page, known as sponsored links. The charges also claim that Google favors its own services. The opening of this procedure, however, warns the Commission that Brussels does not have evidence of a breach of EU rules on competition, but only that the services of Commissioner Joaquin Almunia will lead an investigation "depth" into the case, and "a priority".
In particular, the Competition Authority will now investigate whether Google has abused its dominant position "in its results to lower the position of competing services specialize in providing users with some types of specific content such as price comparison sites, and to focus their services equivalent to giving them a privileged position to exclude competitors, "reads the document of the Commission. According to the indictment, yet , Google would "lower the quality score of research services to competitors in the search results payment." Quality Score (Quality Score ") is one of the factors that determines the price to place an advertisement on Google.
another chapter in the investigation of Brussels, exclusivity clauses that the search giant would require online advertising partners, forbidding them to expose certain types of advertising provided by the search engine competitors, as well as manufacturers of computers and software. Finally, the services of Almunia will shed light on the charges of "restriction on the transferability of advertising online advertising platform to online competitors."
The reaction of the corners of Mountain View is all in a statement: "Since the company was created, we are committed to doing the right thing for our members and our industry, we have made sure that the Advertising was always clearly marked as such, we made it so that users can transfer your data easily when they decide to switch to other services and we have invested heavily in open source projects. However, there's always room for improvement and we will work with the Commission to address their concerns. "
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