European Union Widens Google Antitrust Investigation

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The European Commission has tacked on two German cases to its antitrust

investigation into whether or not Google is unfairly promoting its own Web

services in its search results on Google.com.

The New York Times said

the Commission has taken up complaints from a conglomerate of 450 newspaper and

magazine publishers, known as the B.D.Z.V. and V.D.Z., and Euro-Cities, an

online mapping specialist.

Presumably, this will add more evidential wood to the commission’s broader

case, which crystallized late last month based on complaints from

vertical search engines Foundem, Microsoft’s Ciao and eJustice.

These companies alleged in February that Google surfaces links for Google Product

Search and other Web services over links to their own comparison shopping

engines on Google.com.

The European Commission said Nov. 30:

"The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a 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 and by according

preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in

order to shut out competing services.”

For more, read the eWeek article: Google Antitrust Investigation Widened by European Commission.

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