Google’s general counsel rejects EU antitrust charges
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has rejected charges by the European Union Antitrust Commission claiming that the company abused its market power in Europe by engaging in anti-competitive practices, Venture Beat reports.
In April, the European Commission claimed that Google acted in an anti-competitive manner by altering search results in favor of its own services, like shopping. Google’s legal counsel, Kent Walker, recently responded in a company blog: “Economic data spanning more than a decade, an array of documents and statements from complaints all confirm that product search is robustly competitive.”
EU antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, had sent a document containing the charges to Google in April, asreported by Bidness Etc earlier. The document detailed that the EU believed that Google violated competition laws as it favored its own services, when users searched for products on the search engine.
Mr. Walker elaborated in his blog that companies like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) provide tough competition in terms of search engine results, and that the company had sent around 20 billion referrals to other companies, instead of keeping all the traffic to itself. Mr. Walker said that Internet traffic had increased by 227% in the last 10 years in the countries where EU claimed that Google had abused its power. He further stated that the results that users see are tailored and specific to their queries, and that any attempt to alter the results would harm the customers.
The European Commission had officially sent a Statement of Objection (SO) to the search engine giant in April. The fact that the company has responded just now indicates that Google must have been performing due diligence to see whether it was breaking any laws or not.
The SO, if proven to be correct, could have led to a fine of $6 billion for the company. While Ms. Vestager has been under scrutiny, as tech analysts claim that she has been against Google, she has stated that although Google plays a vital role in a user’s life, the anti-competitive practices by the search engine giant were not part of fair competition. While speaking at NYU, she stated that she had no grudge against the search engine and that the SO had been forwarded to the company.
It has been five months since the EU sent the SO to Google. This, however, is nothing as antitrust cases run a long time. Now that the company has refuted the claims brought forward by EU, the EU would have to change the dynamics of its case and present its findings once again in the future. Since Google came under the wing of its parent company Alphabet, the company has been working autonomously with new CEO Sundar Pichai, while the co-founders manage Alphabet.
More will be known in the coming months when the EU responds to Google’s reply.
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