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European Commission to examine Google |
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The European Commission (EC) has announced that it will investigate Google for alleged anti-competitive practices, pursuant to complaints from three other search service providers that Google's results in search, particularly in competing areas, were tampered to prefer its own services.  The EC said the opening of formal proceedings follows complaints by search service providers about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google's unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged preferential placement of Google's own services. Complainants in the case are the UK based price comparison website Foundem, French legal search engine ejustice.fr, and Microsoft-owned search engine Clao. The companies are said to provide vertical search services, including price comparisons. Google's search provides for two types of results - unpaid results that are often called "natural", "organic" or "algorithmic" search results, and paid advertisements usually displayed at the top and at the right hand side of Google's search results page, better known as sponsored links. The Commission plans to investigate whether Google abused its dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialized in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons (so-called vertical search services) and by according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in order to shut out competing services. It will also evaluate allegations against Google that the search giant lowered the 'Quality Score' for sponsored links of competing vertical search services. The Quality Score is a parameter for pricing paid search. Additionally, the Commission will probe allegations that Google imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their web sites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools. “Finally, it will investigate suspected restrictions on the portability of online advertising campaign data to competing online advertising platforms,” the Commission said, while clarifying that mere initiation of proceedings “does not imply that the Commission has proof of any infringements.” |
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