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posted by takyon on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the click-monopoly dept.

BBC News reports that, following a 5-year investigation, the EU have filed an official anti-competition complaint against Google:

The Commission is responding to complaints that Google, which accounts for more than a [sic] 90% of EU-based web searches, favours its own products in search engine results.

The European Commission has investigated the antitrust allegations - made by Microsoft, Tripadvisor, Streetmap and others - since 2010.

They object to the fact that the firm places reviews from Google+, directions from Google Maps, music and videos from YouTube, and adverts from its AdWords platform ahead of others' links in relevant searches.

Google have not officially replied to the complaint yet and have ten weeks to do so, although they have informed staff they have "a very strong case" and that competition to its search business was "thriving". Competition commissions in India, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan and Canada have opened investigations - the US commission dropped its probe in 2013 after Google agreed to several non-binding commitments. Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has also launched an investigation into the Android operating system.

Google Search Senior Vice President Amit Singhal has published an unofficial response to the complaint. The Register has additional coverage (article from yesterday), reactions from interested parties, and a longer analysis by Andrew Orlowski. Bloomberg has a timeline of key events spanning the 5-year investigation.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:22PM (#171002)

    Dailymotion: 60 million views per day.
    YouTube: 1,200 million views per day.

    PageRank promotes pages that are linked to more often.

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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:28PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:28PM (#171114) Journal
    That explains now, but it's a bit self-fulfilling. Most users click on the top (or, at least, one of the top five) search results. If the top result is for YouTube, then that drives most traffic to YouTube. That boosts the search rank of YouTube, which results in more searches being directed to YouTube, and so on. Part of the complaint is the claim that Google started this cycle by putting YouTube at the top of results early on. I'm not sure this entirely holds water for YouTube (it was already very popular when Google bought it - far more so than Google Video, which is now dead), though it may for other Google services.
    --
    sudo mod me up