Brussels, 05/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - US online search engine Google is still open to reaching an out-of-court settlement with the European Commission in order to close the investigation that has been running for several years now into abuse of its dominant position, explained Google's European business manager Matt Brittin in an interview with Politico Europe. “We want to be pragmatic,” he said.
The European Commission is investigating whether Google abused its dominant position in online searches by putting competing free-of-charge results lower down the page for specific services such as price comparison websites (known as vertical searches), putting its own vertical search sites at the top of the page in order to exclude competitors.
Brittin refused to admit that the Commission's fears were grounded, saying: “There is no evidence that consumers have been harmed here, and actually no evidence that complainants have been harmed.”
The European Commission sent a list of its grievances to Google in April, mainly concerning Google Shopping, the web giant's price comparison portal.
Over and above the listed concerns, the Commission is also examining three other areas of concern about Google, viz: copying its competitors' web content, exclusivity in agreements with advertisers and undue restrictions on advertisers using competing platforms.
In April, the Commission announced it had opened formal investigations into Google's mobile apps operating system, Android. The Commission is trying to discover whether Google has signed anti-competitive deals or has abused its dominant position in connection with Android apps. (Elodie Lamer)