Commissioner Almunia gives Google the opportunity to offer remedies to the complaints on dominant market position

Joaquín Almunia, European Commissioner responsible for Competition highlighted in a speech last 21 of May that the antitrust investigation launched by the European Commission has led to identify four concerns where Google business practices may be considered as abuses of dominance. Having into account that Google Inc. has repeatedly expressed its willingness to discuss any concerns that the Commission might have, the Commissioner explained that he had sent a letter to Google giving to this company the opportunity to offer remedies to the raised concerns.

Joaquín Almunia, European Commissioner responsible for Competition updated in a statement the state of play on the on-going case regarding the Google Inc. company. The European Commission launched in November 2010 an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google had abused a dominant market position, following a number of complaints. For its part, Google Inc. has repeatedly expressed its willingness to discuss any concerns that the Commission might have without having to engage in adversarial proceedings. Thus, the Commissioner Almunia has given Google an opportunity to offer remedies to address the concerns that the Commission have already identified.

The antitrust investigation carried out by the Commission identified as concerns first that Google displays links to its own vertical search services in its general search results on the web. Also that Google copies content from competing vertical search services and uses it in its own offerings. The third concern identified by the Commission relates to agreements between Google and partners on the websites of which Google delivers search advertisements. And finally the Commission is also concerned on the restrictions that Google puts to the portability of online search advertising campaigns from its platform AdWords to the platforms of competitors.

Mr Almunia confirmed the letter sent to Eric Schmidt in which it sets out these four points. In this letter, the Commissioner offers to Google the possibility to come up in a matter of weeks with first proposals of remedies to address each of these points. He also assured that if Google comes up with an outline of remedies which are capable of addressing the above concerns, the Commission will initiate the discussions in order to finalise a remedies package. This would allow to solve the concerns by means of a commitment decision instead of having to pursue formal proceedings with a Statement of objections and to adopt a decision imposing fines and remedies.