EU Asks Google About Anti-competitve Allegations
The EU has received complaints from U.S. search giant, Google, and could launch an anti-trust investigation into the company.
Google today revealed that it has been contacted by the European Commission which says it has received three complaints about Google, one each from Foundem, a UK price comparison site, ejustice.fr, a French legal search engine, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing.
Google's Senior Competition Counsel, Julia Holtz today blogged about the complaints and pointing out that that Foundem is a member of an organisation called ICOMP which is funded partly by Microsoft. Foundem claims argues that Google's algorithms demote their site in our results because they are a vertical search engine and so a direct competitor to Google. Holtz says ejustice.fr's complaint "seems to echo these concerns."
Regarding Ciao!, Google says they were a long-time AdSense partner. In fact, according to Holtz, Google and Ciao! enjoyed a good relationship until the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. "We started receiving complaints about our standard terms and conditions. They initially took their case to the German competition authority, but it now has been transferred to Brussels," said Holtz.
Holtz maintains that Google has done nothing wrong and says, "Our search is not perfect, but it's a very hard computer science problem to crack."
At the time of writing, the EU had yet to announce any formal investigation.
"The commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being," the EU said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg. "As is usual when the commission receives complaints, it informed Google earlier this month and asked the company to comment on the allegations."

I give it 12 months and the Google homepage will have options for 5 other search engines asking if you want to use them instead. Well, the answer is no if I wanted to use Bing or Alta Vista I would have gone to their homepage instead.
I hate to burst your bubble, but when it comes to making money "You do what you have to."
Most, if not all, companies are guilty of some kind of underhanded ploys all in the name of the almighty dollar.
I give it 12 months and the Google homepage will have options for 5 other search engines asking if you want to use them instead. Well, the answer is no if I wanted to use Bing or Alta Vista I would have gone to their homepage instead.
It's a good point, though while I agree that the enforced browser ballot screen is ridiculous it's worth mentioning that Apple is a far less significant player (and thus, issue) outside of the US.
As far at this news piece goes I'm willing to believe it's a Microsoft-staged coup until the opposite has been proven. They have after all been turning up the heat with Bing and seems to have realized that Google is a main competitor in many every aspects of their business.
Profit = 10% R&D work + 40% Marketing work + 50% Lawyers work.
Give us a break!
Cheers! xD!
If the EU is truly pro-consumer then why are they so inconsistent in their attacks? Why are only Microsoft's customers given a browser ballot, for example?
I'm more interested about the EU looking into iTunes. The shop, the forced bundling with other software, the locking out of other players, etc. There are a bunch of issues right there that consumers would like to be investigated IMHO. Much more than a browser ballot in an OS that nobody uses.
Anyone else see a pattern here?
While Google, Intel, Microsoft etc. are shady, they do properly invest in R&D and it does benefit the customer.
Screw you EU, I like my Win7, i7 and Google.com
So, Google filed a complaint against itself? That's a new one, Tom's.
They received complaints from 3 sides, all of 3 linked with Microsoft ?
All the EU did was take note of those complaints, inform Google and asked if they could comment on it.