Google vs. the European Union: an anti-trust battle
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EUROPEAN UNION — Like David against Goliath, Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition commissioner, announced in April she was bringing formal charges against Google for anti-trust violation.
The allegation is that Google manipulates searches, giving it an unfair marketplace advantage. In a press release the EU stated, “The Commission's preliminary view is that such conduct infringes EU antitrust rules because it stifles competition and harms consumers.”
Originally, Google was given a July 7 deadline to respond the complaint but it has since received two extensions, the second of which was announced Thursday. Google now has until Aug. 31 to issue a reply, according to Reuters.
Observers have their doubts about the case. Farhad Manjoo, from the New York Times, believes this will draw comparisons to the Microsoft anti-trust case. He wrote, “With more than a decade of hindsight, the theories supporting the case against Microsoft have all but fallen apart, and the pursuit of the company that makes Windows may suggest a reason for skepticism about this fight against Google: The tech marketplace is fluid and unpredictable.” A new technological development tomorrow may make Google obsolete.
Vestager and the EU aren’t actually suing. They have filed a Statement of Objections, which is "written communication which the Commission has to address to persons or undertakings before adopting a decision that negatively affects their rights.”
Vestager, referring to Google’s search practices, said in the Business Day section of the NY Times that "if the investigation confirmed our concerns, Google would have to face the legal consequences and change the way it does business in Europe.”
Google is said to have “manipulated search results to favor its own services over rivals’, even when they weren’t most relevant for users.” This comes from Federal Trade Commission report in 2002 that was not issued, but leaked to the Wall Street Journal.
In a similar move to the EU’s charges, News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, filed a formal complaint stating Google has undue “political influence” which, in turn, affects its business practices. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times were the first to report the EU’s charges.
Google argues giving people answers on its main search results page is more helpful than giving them links to competing search services.
“We have a very strong case, with especially good arguments when it comes to better services for users and increased competition,” wrote Google general counsel Kent Walker in an internal memo to employees that was obtained by Tech Crunch.
Danny Sullivan, founder of Search Engine Land, an online publication that tracks the search industry, uses the following analogy: “Complaining that Google is lifting its own vertical search engine over other vertical search engines would be like complaining that The New York Times is not carrying The Los Angeles Times’s sports section.”
Kent Larson is from Phoenix, Arizona. He has been married for 30 years. He is the father of two sets of twins. He’s been teaching for 26 years and still enjoys it. His interests include writing, reading, music and movies.
