Brussels, 14/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 14 July, the European Commission opened up a new front against the American Internet giant Google, when it sent a further statement of objections, this time regarding an abuse of dominant position in advertising on external websites.
This latest statement of objections, the third to date, has to do with the restrictions imposed by Google on the capacity of certain external websites to feature contextual advertisements from its competitors. Google places contextual advertisements directly on the website Google Search but also, as an intermediary, on external websites through its search-related advertising intermediation platform 'AdSense for Search'.
The Commission lists five concerns. External websites may not feature contextual advertisements from competitors of Google. They must accept a minimum number of contextual advertisements from Google and reserve them the best positions on their search results pages. Competing advertisements may not be placed above or alongside Google's contextual advertisements. Lastly, external websites must obtain authorisation from Google before making any changes to the display of competitors' contextual advertisements.
The Commission notes that in the framework of abuse of dominant position proceedings, Google recently decided to change the conditions in its contracts for the AdSense platform entered into with its direct partners in order to give these partners greater latitude in displaying competitors' contextual advertisements. It will look closely at the changes made by Google to its practices in order to assess their impact on the market. The American Internet giant now has 10 weeks to respond to the statement of objections.
Reinforcement of objections related to price comparison service. The Commission also announced that it has reinforced its first statement of objections regarding the price comparison service on the Google results pages (EUROPE 11295).
On this second point, “we have further reinforced our position that Google has unduly favoured its own comparison shopping service in its general search result pages, meaning that consumers may not see the most relevant results to their search queries”, said the Commissioner in charge of the dossier, Margrethe Vestager.
Google responded to that first statement of objections in September 2015. The American company explained that the European institution had “failed to understand the market” and that price comparison services should not be considered in isolation, but in parallel to the services provided by trading platforms such as Amazon and eBay. These companies are “not in the same market”, Vestager responded, explaining that Amazon and eBay were consumers of Google rather than its competitors. Even if Google's argument were correct, its behaviour is no less harmful to consumers, the European Commissioner stressed.
In April 2016, the Commission accused Google of having abused its dominant positionby imposing restrictions on producers of mobile devices and mobile network operators (EUROPE 11536). (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)