Google Inc. is being probed by European Union antitrust regulators for allegedly discriminating against competing services in its search results and for stopping some websites accepting rival ads.
The European Commission will check whether Google “imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools,” it said in an e-mailed statement today.
Microsoft Corp. service Ciao from Bing, price- comparison site Foundem, and French legal search engine Ejustice.fr filed a complaint against Google this year. Given the dominance of Google in the European search market this doesn’t come a huge surprise.
Antitrust regulators have power to impose fines of up to 10 percent of revenue for monopoly abuses. The EU’s highest ever penalty of 1.06 billion ($1.38 billion) was against Intel Corp. last year.
Google said in an e-mailed statement it “worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry” by marking ads clearly and enabling users and advertisers to move data to other services.
“There’s always going to be room for improvement and so we’ll be working with the commission to address any concerns,” Google, based in Mountain View, California said. The commission said it will also investigate whether Google abused its dominant position by promoting its own services over rival price-comparison sites.
On Sept. 25, the commission said it had closed investigations into Apple Inc.’s practices after it relaxed restrictions on the development tools for iPhone applications and introduced cross-border iPhone warranty repair services within the EU region.
The European Commission will check whether Google “imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools,” it said in an e-mailed statement today.
Antitrust regulators have power to impose fines of up to 10 percent of revenue for monopoly abuses. The EU’s highest ever penalty of 1.06 billion ($1.38 billion) was against Intel Corp. last year.
Google said in an e-mailed statement it “worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry” by marking ads clearly and enabling users and advertisers to move data to other services.
“There’s always going to be room for improvement and so we’ll be working with the commission to address any concerns,” Google, based in Mountain View, California said. The commission said it will also investigate whether Google abused its dominant position by promoting its own services over rival price-comparison sites.
On Sept. 25, the commission said it had closed investigations into Apple Inc.’s practices after it relaxed restrictions on the development tools for iPhone applications and introduced cross-border iPhone warranty repair services within the EU region.
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