EU’s Antitrust Probe Into Google Focuses On Niche Local Search Engines

Tuesday, 30 November 2010 13:42

EU’s Antitrust Probe Into Google Focuses On Niche Local Search Engines

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The European Commission has launched an investigation into Google after some vertical search engines submitted formal complaints that the firm had used its dominant position to crowd out and ‘disappear’ their results in its index – as reports various outlets including Bloomberg and the BBC.

The EU is

obliged to look into whether Google as purposely lowered the search rankings of price comparison sites Foundem (UK) and Microsoft-owned Ciao, and French legal search engine ejustice.fr in its results.

The EU investigatation will also take in Google’s ad platform, which covers Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results and “an alleged preferential placement of Google’s own services.”

We’re going to take a look at what all this means.