Brussels, 11/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - In an interview with the Financial Times on 10 January 2013, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia said: “My conviction is that Google are diverting traffic” and abusing its dominant position on the market. Google is the world's biggest online search engine and at the top of search results it lists its own services, such as bank cards, ticket price comparisons and the like. The US giant was absolved of this by the Federal Trade Commission in the United States, but investigations are ongoing in the EU, stated the Commissioner, hoping that an out-of-court solution would be found (which would not cover the Androïd smartphone operating system). Almunia justified the difference in approach on either side of the Atlantic by Google's strong position in Europe, where it accounts for a full 90% of searches, and the EU's different way of measuring abuse of dominant positions.
The Commissioner pointed out that the Commisson's concerns focus on “the way they present their services, ” rather than the search mechanism itself. This suggests that one element of the solution might be labelling when in-house services, such as maps, price comparisons and the like, are are artificially given a higher billing than rivals. At a meeting with the head of Google in December, Almunia said that he wanted Google to come up with a proposal for an out-of-court solution by February, failing which he would be forced to “take action”. (FG/transl.fl)