Brussels, 13/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - EU Economy and Digital Society Commissioner Günther Oettinger told German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag at the weekend that a decision on the next stages in the Google case would be taken “very soon” by Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager and would be “wide-reaching.”
The US online search giant has been under investigation by the European Commission for several years about abuse of its dominant position. Three series of commitments offered by the company were rejected by the previous Commission.
In Brussels, it is said that announcements might be made on Wednesday 15 April via the sending of a statement of objections to Google. Some plaintiffs, however, are sceptical about a decision arriving any time soon because it only sent requests for information very recently, and this would not leave enough time to prepare a statement of objections. If the Commission did decide to send a statement of objections, and if, after Google exercises its right to defend itself, the Commission were to decide that there was sufficient proof of abuse of a dominant position, then it could fine Google up to €6 billion, 10% of its global annual turnover. It may also ban the offending behaviour. The Commission refused to comment on Monday 13 April.
Google is accused of putting results from its own search engines first, making competing search engines less visible because their entries arrive further down the page when seeking products, restaurants, hotels and so on. It is also accused of reproducing without permission information obtained from competing search engines, information such as customer reviews. Finally, the Mountain View giant is accused of only allowing adverts on its results pages that come from websites and does not ensure portability of its AdWords adverts to competing platforms. Commissioner Vestager is said to be more interested than her predecessor in the mapping side of Google (Google Maps). (Elodie Lamer)