Brussels, 04/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - Proof of abusive practice by Google are mushrooming. The US online travel website Expedia and its subsidiary TripAdvisor lodged a complaint on Tuesday 3 April 2012 with the European Commission against Google, accusing it of taking abusive advantage of its dominant position on the market and acting in an uncompetitive way.
This complaint, along with another the same day by British Satnav company Streetmap, has been added to a further 13 complaints lodged with the European Commission, including online sales deals comparison website Foundem of the UK, a German price comparison website owned by Microsoft Ciao, and a French price comparison website, Ejustice.fr, as part of the investigation opened at the end of 2010 into the giant web search company (see EUROPE 10267). The Commission is particularly interested in two markets dominated by Google, namely search and online advertising. It is examining whether Google forces exclusivity clauses on its advertising clients and whether it favours its own search engines over competitors by putting its own adverts top of search pages. EU Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almúnia said last week that a decision would be made this month and if the complaints about Google are founded, then the Commission would continue its investigations and would take action and seek talks with Google if it found ways of remedying the situation..
Expedia accuses Google of favouring its own websites, Flight and Places, which are specialised in looking for flights and restaurant and hotels, respectively. TripAdvisor complained about Google in 2010, accusing it of deliberately downgrading references to TripAdvisor to the benefit of search results featuring Google services instead. (FG/transl.fl)