EC Anticipates More Anti-Google Complaints

The European Commission is expecting further antitrust complaints against Google due to its “extremely large” market share in search and advertising, according to European Union competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia.

He reportedly said Microsoft’s complaint against Google, filed at the end of last month, would “not be the last one” and disclosed the Commission received more than 500 responses to questionnaires sent to web companies, publishers and advertisers earlier this year.

Almunia made the comments at a conference on competition law in Switzerland.

Meeting with Schmidt

Almunia said he had met Google’s former chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and that Schmidt asked him to bring the antitrust investigation against Google to a close “as soon as possible”.

He said the Commission would be “as firm as possible in eliminating all kinds of barriers” that could hinder Google competitors. However he said the investigation “will continue to require a lot of effort” because of the amount of information regulators will need to take on board to understand the workings of the web search market.

Web search is an area that requires constant vigilance from competition regulators, Almunia said.

Google has said it is cooperating with the Commission on the investigation.

Google dominance

Microsoft’s complaint to the Commission centred on Google’s dominant position in the search market.

In a company blog post, Microsoft’s senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith claimed that Google has “engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers”.

The European Commission is already investigating Google over antitrust issues, following previous complaints by rivals including Microsoft Ciao and UK price comparison site Foundem. The companies allege that Google’s search algorithms demote their sites in Google search results because they are Google competitors.

The investigation was expanded in December 2010, following further 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.