Brussels, 23/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - Antoine Colombani, spokesman for EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, said on 23 July that the Commissioner would decide in September how he intends to proceed on the Google case.
Google has been under investigation for four years and, in February, it offered to make a series of commitments to address accusations of abuse of its dominant position on the online search publicity market.
Colombani said: “The Google investigation is ongoing. We have written to the formal complainants in the ongoing proceedings and we have not received yet all their replies. In early August all replies will have been submitted. We will then thoroughly analyse the arguments they contain and, depending on the outcome of that analysis, the next steps will be decided by Mr Almunia in September”. The day before Colombani's comments, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported that the commissioner might decide to take a new look at Google's commitments in the light of convincing arguments from the plaintiff companies. If so, then the new European Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker would inherit the case. Several close sources say that this is, indeed, a possible outcome.
The FT says that the Commission will focus on two issues: whether greater visibility for Google's rivals addresses the problem of searches being guided towards Google services; and the auction system for three rival services. On the second issue, one of the plaintiff companies, Foundem, says that the Commission's argument that the auction system would not generate enough new profits for Google is false (see EUROPE 11123). The FT says another question is whether the investigation should be extended to other services, such as YouTube.
Two MEPs who have been proactive in this matter for nearly two years, Ramon Tremosa i Balcells (ALDE, Spain) and Andreas Schwab (EPP, Germany), have welcomed that Almunia may decide to take a new look at the case. They say in a press release that “the settlement as it is currently proposed fails to fight abuse in the best interest of consumers”. One of their criticisms is the auction system, on which they say: “Consumers will no longer find the cheapest offer at the top of a Google page, but those who have the highest revenue margin. At the same time, new and innovative start-ups will simply not be able to enter the online marketplace to compete as they do not have the necessary capital to participate in Google's auctions”. Almunia has so far said that Google's commitments were sufficient, but recognised that there was a possibility that the plaintiffs' arguments might make him change his mind, although he doubted that they would. In a letter to the other European commissioners in June 2014, he considered asking for the commitment to be improved upon.
Some sources say the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, is under pressure to not hand over to the new Juncker Commission such an important deal in the form in which it currently stands because this would restrict room for manoeuvre on the digital agenda that the new Commission is planning to focus on. Small European companies would find it difficult to survive the impact of the current commitments. (EL)