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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:21AM
If I ever walk into Walmart or Target, I expect their store-brand to be front and center everywhere. But while there are towns with only a Walmart, and PC tools with only Win support, Duckduckgo, website, and a few dozen others are just a click away (website search isn't even in Mint's Mozilla out of the box, and website stopped paying to be Mozilla's default), ready to lead you into the same internet. You're not being forced to install an alternate browser, it's just a different address. People are idiots, but there's a limit to how much we need to protect the average joe/jane from their own laziness.
Sure, but when Microsoft did it, you were up in arms, right? After all, IE was their store-brand and you didn't like it when *it* was front and center.
But at last check even my Android phone didn't farce me to Google search. And the dummy G-account, created just for it, isn't setup for anything else.
More pertinently: *DO YOU* use Google search? Do you perhaps use it because it's the default and you never got around to installing another search app?
If so,their ploy was successful and their position has been used to exploit you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:31AM
Windows was their grocery brand. IE was their car brand.
What we didn't like was that every time we bought something to eat, we had to buy a new car also.
This was made even worse by IE being less stable than a Reliant.