The European Commission has recently notified Google about the complaints received from three companies, the UK site Foundem, the French legal search engine ejustice.fr, as well as Microsoft's ciao! from Bing. Following these complaints the Commission has risen a preliminary antitrust inquiry on Google about eventual anti-competitive practices.

The European Commission has launched a preliminary antitrust inquiry on Google following the complaints issued by three companies regarding an eventual dominant position of US search engines which would prevent potential competitors from entering into market.

These companies that have complained to the Commission about Google's position in the market, which include a UK price comparison site, Foundem, a French legal search engine called ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing, claim that the company has used its search results to market its own services.

Google has reported that the company will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints, being completely confident that Google's “business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law”. Julia Holtz, Google's Senior Competition Counsel, highlighted the fact that the company “always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market. We believe our business practices reflect those commitments”.

Preliminary antitrust inquiry

All cases, irrespective of their origin, are subject to an initial assessment phase. During this phase DG Competition examines whether the case merits further investigation and, if so, preliminarily defines the orientation of such investigation, in particular with regard to the parties, the markets and the conduct to be investigated. During this phase, DG Competition may make use of investigative measures such as requests for information in accordance with Regulation 1/2003.

Antitrust: improved transparency and predictability of proceedings

This case, which makes reference to EU actions concerning the application of Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ("TFEU"), has been put forward just after the Commission's Directorate General for Competition (DG Competition) and the Hearing Officers on the Europa website have published detailed explanations concerning how European Commission antitrust procedures work in practice, in order to further enhance the transparency and the predictability of Commission antitrust proceedings.

The documents, published early January 2010, will make it easier for companies under investigation to understand how the investigation will proceed, what they can expect from the Commission and what the Commission will expect from them. They will be applied by the Commission provisionally as from their publication, but stakeholders are invited to submit comments on the documents until March 3rd 2010 with a view to adjusting them in the light of comments from interested parties.