Brussels, 21/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 21 May the vice president of the European Commission who is responsible for competition, Joaquín Almunia, announced that he had written to the president of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt. In his letter, the commissioner asked Schmidt to present the Commission over the next few weeks with solutions to Commission concerns about the company's practices, which could constitute an abuse of dominant position. This approach takes into account Google's determination to resolve these kinds of problems and avoid litigation procedure.
The four Commission concerns follow an investigation launched in November 2010 and can be summarised as follows: - in its general search results on the web, Google displays links to its own vertical search services, which focus on specific topics, such as restaurants, news or products, and promotes them rather than competitors, which could have a negative impact on the latter; - Google copies content from competing vertical search services and uses it in its own offerings. Google may be copying original material from the websites of its competitors such as user reviews and using that material on its own sites without their prior authorisation. In this way they are appropriating the benefits of the investments of competitors and promoting a practice that could have a negative impact on the travel or food guide sites of the latter; - Google's agreements result in de facto exclusivity requiring its partners to obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google, thus shutting out competing providers of search advertising intermediation services; - Google imposes restrictions on the portability of online search advertising campaigns from its platform AdWords to the platforms of competitors. These involve contractual restrictions on software developers, which prevent them from offering tools that allow the seamless transfer of search advertising campaigns.
The commissioner now expects Google to provide satisfactory responses to these concerns, which could be translated into a number of commitments on the company. If these are not forthcoming, the Commission may begin formal procedures through a statement of objectives and, ultimately, may impose fines. (FG/transl.fl)