EU Antitrust Investigates Google for Abuse of Dominant Position

The EU Antitrust Investigation
The European Antitrust authority has responded to complaints from three internet companies (Microsoft’s Ciao, Foundem, and ejustice.fr) alleging “manipulations” of Google’s organic search results by the Mountain View company itself. Under scrutiny is the PR (PageRank) that Google assigns to websites and individual web pages, which is one of the factors considered for a site’s ranking in Google’s SERPs. For years, PageRank has been just one of multiple factors (several still unknown) that Google considers to determine a site’s ranking and corresponding pages, but it remains an important factor, at least according to the accusation.

Google Defends Itself
For its part, Google does not hide the factors that determine a site’s PageRank, which are based on a series of mathematical calculations. It explicitly states that all of this is public knowledge, therefore the accusation is absolutely unfounded.

Google’s Monopoly
Regardless of how the ruling turns out, there is no doubt that Google holds a dominant position in the world of search engines, especially in Europe. Sites derive 70-80% of their traffic from Google, and even a slight fluctuation in the keywords that transfer traffic from the search engine to the site can mean a drastic loss of visitors. These are very common situations on the internet, much more so than one might think, and often Google itself denies dialogue, refusing to provide public or private explanations. Google’s monopoly is not limited to organic search alone. News reports these days speak of a series of commercial acquisitions by the California-based company, from ITA Software, which is causing much discussion in America (competitors there are also on high alert), to the latest rumors concerning the acquisition of Groupon.