Internet search giant Google is facing European antitrust scrutiny after three companies filed complaints about unfair competition.
A UK price-comparison site called Foundem, a French legal search engine called Ejustice.fr and a Microsoft service called Ciao From Bing, have brought competition complaints to the European Commission, Google said today in a posting on its European policy blog.
Foundem and Ejustice.fr complain that Google downplays their sites in its search results, Google said. Ciao From Bing, a former partner of Google, was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.
That company's complaint relates to Google's terms and conditions, Google said. Ciao originally took its complaint to Germany's antitrust agency and the case was transferred to the European Commission, Google said.
"At this stage this is a fact-finding exercise and we're happy to answer the commission's questions," Google said in a statement. "We are happy to explain our products and technology, and are very confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as within European competition law."
"Though each case raises 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," Julia Holtz, senior competition counsel for Google, said on the blog.
"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."
Google dominates the search-engine market, though Microsoft's Bing has made gains in the US in the past eight months. Google controlled 65.4 per cent of the market in January, according to ComScore.
Yahoo! ranked second with 17 per cent, and Bing was third with 11.3 per cent. Microsoft and Yahoo plan to integrate their search businesses after winning regulatory approval for the plan from European and US agencies this month.
The companies struck a 10-year agreement last July in a bid to challenge Google. Foundem is a member of ICOMP, which is funded in part by Microsoft, Google said.
Bloomberg