Complaints against Google

Google in trouble?

Google has revealed in a blog posting that the European Commission has now notified the search engine goliath that it's looking into complaints about the companies behaviour.

The European Commission has revealed that the complaints were made by UK price comparison site Foundem, French legal search engine ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao.

Google's senior competition lawyer Julia Holtz said the internet giant was "confident" it operated within European competition law. Foundem have claimed that its site is demoted in Google's search results.

"Foundem [...] argues that our algorithms demote their site in our results because they are a vertical search engine and so a direct competitor to Google," Google said. "ejustice.fr's complaint seems to echo these concerns."

Terms and conditions

The complaint regarding Ciao, which Microsoft bought in 2008, concerns Google's standard terms and conditions. Microsoft initially took its case to the German competition authority, but Google said it had now been transferred to Brussels.

"Although we haven't been notified yet by the commission, we do believe it's natural for competition officials to look at online advertising given how important it is to the development of theinternet and the dominance of one player," a Microsoft spokesman said to the BBC.

"In the meantime, we continue to cooperate with the German government's investigation into complaints brought by Ciao."

Google's AdSense program, which has worked with Ciao, helps websites sell space to advertisers. Google received complaints about its business practices from Ciao after it was acquired by Microsoft, Google said. Microsoft bought Munich-based Ciao's parent, Greenfield Online Inc.

Google response

"At this stage this is a fact-finding exercise and we're happy to answer the commission's questions," Mountain View, California-based Google said in an emailed statement. "We are happy to explain our products and technology, and are very confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as within European competition law."

"Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners. This is not the case," Holtz, said on the blog. "We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market."

Jodie Humphries

Jodie Humphries graduated from Bath Spa University with a BA Hons in Creative Writing in 2008. She has worked for GDS Publishing for the digital group since July 2009. She has previous experience with writing for the web, running her own website since April 2007.

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