Brussels, 04/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - Several plaintiffs in the Google case, in which the US giant is accused of abusing its dominant position, have decided to form a united front, as well as adopt a coherent approach in the complaints they are each addressing to the European Commission in the management of this issue (see EUROPE 11123). The positions they put forward to the press on Thursday 4 September in Brussels include references to the lack of transparency, the different treatment they have received compared to Google, and arguments that can be easily demolished and which are not backed up by any documentation.
Thomas Höppner, who represents a number of plaintiffs in this affair, such as German newspaper publishers, said that the third series of commitments proposed by Google “only try to mitigate some effects of these anticompetitive conducts”. Christopher Kellner from the ETTSA association said that there is “no significant difference in effectiveness between the second and third set of concessions” which Commissioner for Competition Policy Joaquin Almunia, from Spain, had judged unacceptable when Google previously presented them. The US lawyer, Gary Reback, who has been nicknamed the “anti-trust bulldog”, expressed his astonishment at the lack of documentation and examination from the Commission to support its arguments. He stated: “There was literally no documents, or just one but totally irrelevant, nothing to rely on”. Arguments been backed up by little documentation were only received by the plaintiffs in June, when they began to receive preliminary letters rejecting their complaints. Shivaun Raff, CEO of Foundem, which compares prices online, alluded to the “unilateral” transparency in this affair where Google had access to the plaintiffs' arguments but not vice versa. This advantage enabled Google to put forward “misleading arguments and submissions”. Reback was keen to demonstrate how the proposals from Google force up prices for consumers rather than tackle the negative impact of the abusive behaviour displayed by the US giant. He said that Google had introduced changes to the way it illustrated its specialised and commercial results, after submitting a series of commitments to ensure that the agreement did not apply to the majority of its practices. Jean-Yves Art, the Advocate General involved with the Microsoft case, and David Wood, the legal adviser for ICOMP, said that the Commission should look at the Google dossier in light of the Court ruling on Intel, this summer (see EUROPE 11099).
On the same day, European press publishers made an appeal in a joint press release for the Commission to reject Google's commitments. It should also be noted that only 18 of the 20 of plaintiff companies responded to “pre-rejection” letters from the Commission. (EL)