San Francisco — Google is once again confronting a new round of scrutiny from antitrust regulators, announcing late yesterday that the European Commission has launched an investigation for possible anti-competitive behavior by the Mountain View search giant, following complaints from three European search sites filed against it, Google revealed in a blog post Tuesday.
The investigation, which has been represented as preliminary, follows complaints filed with the European Commission by Ciao Bing, a subsidiary of Microsoft; Foundem, a U.K. comparison shopping site; and EJustice.fr, a legal search site in France. Foundem, is a member ICOMP, an organization which is funded partly by Microsoft.
In a blog post Tuesday afternoon, Google admitted the preliminary investigation, but asserted that it has done nothing wrong. Google said two of the companies filing complaints with the commission were owned or had close ties to Microsoft, which through its recently approved partnership with Yahoo has emerged as Google’s primary competition in Internet search.
“We have always labored hard to ensure that our success is earned the right way — through technological innovation and great products, rather than by locking in our users or advertisers, or creating artificial barriers to entry,” Julia Holtz, a Google senior competition counsel, wrote in the post. “While we will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints, we are confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law.”
Foundem alleges that Google’s algorithm pushes the shopping site down in its rankings because it considers it a competitor, Google said. Foundem is a member of an organization called ICOMP, Google said, “which is funded partly by Microsoft.”
Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday evening.
The complaint from Ejustice.fr is based on similar grounds to the one from Foundem, Google said.
“Though each case expresses slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners. This is not the case,” Google said in its posting.
The Commission, which is the EU’s highest antitrust authority, often performs a preliminary investigation when it gets complaints about potentially anti-competitive behavior. It typically examines the market in question, interviews companies involved and then decides whether to launch a full investigation. Google appears to be the target of such a preliminary probe.
The search giant implied, but did not say outright, that Microsoft may have had a hand in two of the complaints.
“Regarding Ciao, they were a long-time AdSense partner of Google’s, with whom we always had a good relationship,” Google said in its blog post. “However, ever since Microsoft acquired Ciao in 2008 (renaming it Ciao from Bing) 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.”
“We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users’ interests first and to compete fair and square in the market. We believe our business practices reflect those commitments.”
Holtz noted that increased scrutiny came “with the territory when you are a large company”.
Holtz said Google will be providing information to the EU but is confident the company’s conduct is lawful.
Microsoft said it was not surprised to see competition officials looking at the online advertising market, given its importance to the Internet and “the dominance of one player.” It said it had not been notified yet by the Commission about the Google inquiry.
“In the meantime, we continue to cooperate with the German government’s investigation into complaints brought by Ciao, the German Newspaper Publishers Association, Association of German Magazine Publishers, and Euro-Cities, a Berlin-based online mapping company,” Microsoft said in a statement sent via e-mail.
Google said it decided to discuss the case because it knew it would garner attention in the media.