Since November last year antitrust investigation have surrounded Google and it has just grown. Sources close to the matter have stated that there have been registered complaints by five new groups. Like every such antitrust case in EU and US, here even the detailing of the newly registered complaints are sparse. Even the details of the complainants are not disclosed. European Commission are reviewing these complaints which are officially reported against the search engine giant.
Reuters cited the news and accordingly two insider sources made a claim that the count of complaints has gone up to nine now with the European Commission, but it stated that the new complaints are from small businesses. To be more specific, the other source detailed that 2 of the new complaints are from additional companies and the other 3 are from national regulators. European Commission has however just given a confirmation for four of the newly registered complaints for the time being.
Google was contacted by Search Engine Watch for their comment on the matter. In response, a spokesperson said that he has no exact knowledge about the information news-casted by Reuters. He in fact pointed out to the two Google posts relating to antitrust probes which were made earlier against Google. One can find the detailing of the Google posts can be revived here and here.
Looking at the penalties, Google might still not be really worried as the cap for penalties from the EC is 10% of the turnover globally. Even if these complaints are official, there is not much of a panicky situation and additionally only the complaints have no weight-age until the decision of EC is out.
Looking at Google’s antitrust probing past, one can note that Google has been visiting Commissions not only in Europe but even in the US. The investigations are on for antitrust violations in both the cases. The start of the investigation was marked in November, 2010, when three companies had claimed that the search engine giant was manually working at demoting the respective companies websites as there were on a competing platform with Google. Two out of the three companies had Microsoft as a part, directly or indirectly.
Microsoft’s Ciao by Bing was the direct complainant of Microsoft, while Foundem, which is a U.K. Price comparison site, gets its funding partly from the Software Giant. Apart from the Microsoft connection, French legal search engine ejustice.fr was the third party to join in the complainant’s list. This was followed by an antitrust complaint which was officially registered by Microsoft in Europe.
Microsoft has had a number of antitrust complaints registered against itself, but this complaint registered by Microsoft against Google was in fact the first complaint made by Microsoft for antitrust. It had never registered an antitrust complaint against anyone before this one.
Talking about the time involved for the investigation to get resolved, it could actually take months or even years. The time frame stands similar for both the Commissions, that is in Europe and U.S. The penalties would be as per the ruling if in any case the decision is against Google. Alternatively, FTC ruling would even be considered. If found guilty, Google will have to shell out billions of dollars.