It was only a matter of time before Brussels began looking at an antitrust complaint against Google. Murmurings of discontent about the dominant search engine have been going on for several years now, and recently there has been a rash of smaller cases against the company.
Three particular cases are being considered by the European Commission. A complaint by Foundem, a UK vertical search company, one from ejustice.fr, a French legal search site, and a complaint made initially in Germany by Ciao!, a vertical search site recently bought by Microsoft.
Google has also recently lost points with European regulators over its plans to make books searchable, and over privacy, with its StreetView service arousing particular concern in several countries. Swiss authorities, for example, have taken Google to court over the service, which shows pedestrian-level views of all the streets in key towns and cities.
On Wednesday, an Italian court also found against Google in a case over an offensive video being posted on YouTube, and sentenced four of its executives to six months in prison. The US company is not flavour of the month anywhere on the continent.
There have been a number of cases in the US making similar antitrust complaints. MyTriggers, a US vertical search site, has sued Google in an Ohio court for monopolistic behaviour. Other US complaints are detailed here.
Google’s blog post on the antitrust case has made much of the not-so-invisible hand of Microsoft behind all of this. Certainly Microsoft is involved. It owns Ciao!, and is a key member of IComp, the Brussels-based industry group that is backing Foundem in its complaint. IComp is seen by some as largely Microsoft’s mouthpiece in Brussels. Also, the antitrust lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, Charles (Rick) Rule, who is representing MyTriggers in the US, is known for his previous work with Microsoft.
Getting Google mired in an lengthy antitrust investigation would be fantastically convenient for Microsoft at this moment. Microsoft has recently settled its own issues with Brussels, and will next week start rolling out its “browser ballot screen”, offering European users of its operating system a choice of internet browsers. It has promised to comply with Brussels’ recommendations on the time it can keep personal search data. It has approval for the search tie-up with Yahoo. In all ways, Microsoft can look whiter than white, while Google’s reputation is tarnished. Microsoft’s Bing search engine is now good enough to be a viable alternative to Google, and users need only some impetus to make the switch.
Microsoft’s involvement, however, does not mean that the complaints are invalid, or that Brussels will not investigate. Most antitrust complaints come from competitors. The latest antitrust case against Microsoft was initiated by Opera, the Norwegian browser company, and as the investigation gathered pace, all kinds of Microsoft rivals, including Google, added their voices to the chorus of complaints.
