Chillin'Competition

Three complaints have been logdged before the EU Commission against Google. The complaints have been introduced by British price comparison website Foundem, French legal search engine ejustice.fr, and –  guess who – ciao.de, a Microsoft subsidiary. Frankly speaking, this is everything but surprising.

First, given the mounting degree of antitrust exposure faced by Google in Europe, and elsewhere in the world (think of the GBS in the US), it was just a matter of time for DG COMP to at least scrutinize Google’s conduct. Now, the many press announcements made in this respect shall be toned down a little. If I understand correctly, the Commission has not, as reported by several journalists, “opened a probe”, but simply announced that it will review the complaints. A Commission official is quoted to have said: “The Commission can confirm that it has received three complaints against Google which it is examining. The Commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being,“

Second, on legal grounds, the fact that Google’s conduct is challenged for a violation of abuse of dominance rules is also unsurprising. It is reported that Google would “unfairly” rank competing websites on its search engine. Whilst I have no particular information on this, I suspect the complaints to describe Google as an operator holding an essential search facility (a disputable argument actually). In turn, the systematic down-ranking of competitors could arguably involve, such as in the case of a physical infrastructure, something akin to a constructive refusal to supply, which squeezes rivals from the market. I would really love to see how the complaints are structured.  There might also be issues of unlawful discrimination against competing websites (Article 102 c)).

The good news from Google: it can draw upon, and recycle, a lot of the Microsoft-related antitrust literature on dynamic efficiencies, software integration, refusals to deal, etc. Quite paradoxically, Google and Microsoft may well be foes on the commercial front, but as far as legal argumentation is concerned, they have a lot to share.

(Image possibly subject to copyrights: source here)