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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.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by wantkitteh on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:36PM
I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head right there - "If I ever walk into Walmart or Target" suggests you have a choice of equally good stores to visit. Google have excellent quality search, that's undeniable, and no-one else even touches their search result relevance or index rate / breadth. That's why they have a monopoly and there's nothing wrong with that, it's their primary product and it kicks ass. Whether Google have taken advantage of the integration of their products to push their own services over other services on an un-level playing field as far as search result prevalence is concerned is up to a team of professional hair-splitters to decide.
No sympathy for Google from me - can't pay your taxes? Have a few billion a year in recurring fines instead, all the same to my economy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:29AM
They don't, really. They used to, but nowadays Google search results are getting close to what Altavista used to be. Remember Altavista? Altavista used to be the big search provider that nobody could touch. Until a couple of guys made a search engine that found what you were looking for in the first hit, rather than somewhere in the thousands of pages like Altavista. They did this by creating a better search algorithm, but also by using AND rather than OR - with Altavista, if you wanted usefull search results you had to add a + in front of every freaking word to get it to AND rather than OR. A few years ago, Google changed so that you had to add a + in front of every freaking word, and then a little later replaced + with double quotes.
What we need is two guys in a Garage.
Oh, I'm sure Microsoft could do better, if they really tried, but as it is right now, the only reason the rapid downwards direction of Google Search hasn't yet taken Google below Bing is that Microsoft has been working hard to make sure Bing is even crappier.