European Union competition watchdogs today announced a competition investigation into Google, investigating whether the Internet giant abused its dominant position in the online search market.
'The European Commission has decided to open an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google has abused a dominant position in online search,' the Brussels watchdogs said in a statement.
The action 'follows complaints by search service providers about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google's unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged preferential placement of Google's own services,' the statement added.
'Since we started Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry - ensuring that ads are always clearly marked, making it easy for users to take their data with them when they switch services and investing heavily in open source projects,' a statement from Google said.
'But there's always going to be room for improvement, and so we'll be working with the Commission to address any concerns,' it added.
The European Commission says that Google's rivals claim it was 'allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialised in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons.'
Similarly, the company stands accused of imposing 'exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their web sites, as well as on computer and software vendors.'
