EU Steps Up Its Antitrust Investigation Against Google

(RTTNews) - The European Commission said Thursday that it has sent two Statements of Objections to Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL, GOOG). The Commission has reinforced, in a supplementary Statement of Objections, its preliminary conclusion that Google has abused its dominant position by systematically favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said, "Google has come up with many innovative products that have made a difference to our lives. But that doesn't give Google the right to deny other companies the chance to compete and innovate. Today, we have further strengthened our case that Google has unduly favoured its own comparison shopping service in its general search result pages."

The additional evidence relates to the way Google favours its own comparison shopping service over those of competitors, the impact of a website's prominence of display in Google's search results on its traffic, and the evolution of traffic to Google's comparison shopping service compared to its competitors. The Commission is concerned that users do not necessarily see the most relevant results in response to queries - this is to the detriment of consumers, and stifles innovation.

In any event, today's supplementary Statement of Objections finds that even if merchant platforms are included in the market affected by Google's practices, comparison shopping services are a significant part of that market and Google's conduct has weakened or even marginalised competition from its closest rivals.

Google and Alphabet have 8 weeks to respond to the supplementary Statement of Objections.

Separately, the Commission has also informed Google in a Statement of Objections of its preliminary view that the company has abused its dominant position by artificially restricting the possibility of third party websites to display search advertisements from Google's competitors.

The supplementary Statement of Objections on comparison shopping follows a Statement of Objections issued in the same case in April 2015. Both Statements of Objections are addressed to Google and its parent company, Alphabet. Sending a Statement of Objections does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.

The Commission said it takes the preliminary view that the practices, which have been in place for ten years, hinder competition on this commercially important market. The Statement of Objections takes issue with the exclusivity practice as from 2006.

Google and Alphabet have 10 weeks to respond to the Statement of Objections.