Google is being investigated by the EU's antitrust regulator for allegedly discriminating against competing services in its search results and for stopping some websites accepting rival ads.
The European Commission will check whether Google "imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools," it said in an statement today.
Microsoft service Ciao from Bing, UK price-comparison site Foundem, and French legal search engine Ejustice.fr and Microsoft service Ciao from Bing filed an antitrust complaint against Google in February.
The antitrust investigation comes on the back of separate criticism from French, German and British data protection regulators over Google's StreetView service that collects data from private homes.
"Given the dominance of Google in the European search market this doesn't come a huge surprise," said Sam Hart, a media analyst at Charles Stanley in London. He said remedies "often end up being relatively insignificant in terms of market position" and are "incredibly unlikely" to alter the company's market position.
Antitrust regulators have power to impose fines of up to 10 per cent of revenue for monopoly abuses. The EU's highest ever penalty of €1.06 billion was against Intel last year.
Google said in a statement it "worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry" by marking ads clearly and enabling users and advertisers to move data to other services.
"There's always going to be room for improvement and so we'll be working with the commission to address any concerns," Google, based in Mountain View, California said. The commission said it will also investigate whether Google abused its dominant position by promoting its own services over rival price-comparison sites. Google is "stifling innovation," Foundem said.
It "should not be allowed to discriminate in favor of its own services" and should clearly label its own services in search results, the UK shopping-search site said.
Bloomberg