Tailored for severe EU case against Google

Deliberate intervention in the search ranking throats traffic to competitors, it is claimed.

Late last night it became known that the complaints from three specialized European search services, respectively United Kingdom, Germany and France, have triggered an EU lawsuit against Google, on suspicion of abuse of dominant market position.
Google denies the accusations in an official blog post. They believe it is natural to be affected by such things when one is the market leader. They say not only that they comply with European laws and regulations to the letter, but also that they do not do anything that may prevent competition or frame users or partners. They also suggest that Microsoft may have a hand in the complaints.
In a comment to the Wall Street Journal said Microsoft is natural that the competition authorities look at online advertising, "given how important it is for the internal network development and dominance of one player."

The case is an initial phase, where the European Commission seeks to determine the facts, after receiving complaints that the opinion seems dependable. When the facts are clear, the Commission must either shelve the matter, or design a charge type.
The three triggering complaints come from two price comparison services, German Ciao! from Bing and British Foundem and ejustice.fr, a French service for search in legislation and judgments, legal terminology and legal experts.

Ciao was acquired by Microsoft in 2008 for 350 million euros in 2008.
Foundem is a council member in Icomp (Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace), a trade organization for marketing on the Internet, where Google is not a member. The most prominent members of Icomp are Microsoft and PR agency Burson-Marsteller. According to the site is Icomp funded in part through member contributions and partly through sponsorship from Microsoft. Icomp a registered lobby group in the European Union and the United Kingdom. They refuse to be a mouthpiece for Microsoft, and says they speak for a membership of 50, and "many others who agree with the need for more competition, greater transparency, greater privacy and better security on the Internet marketplace."

The services behind the complaints claimed that Google uses dirty methods to ensure that they are not as up on Google's results lists.
Foundems complaints against Google has been known since 2006. They are reviewed in detail in an official blog post that was originally posted last August, and which has since expanded significantly. There is described including how the media's attention from the Guardian and the BBC in July 2009 got Google to "adjust" their ranking algorithm: Suddenly Foundem climbed up on Google when searching for such "price comparison" (price comparison). The breakthrough came in October 2009:
- In October 2009 it was finally opened a direct communication channel between Foundem and Google's top leadership, among them a senior member of Google's search quality group. Google has asked Foundem not disclose details of those conversations. The direct result was that all penalties against Foundem was finally abolished 1 December 2009. Overnight Foundems increased traffic from Google with around 10 000 percent, "according to the updated edition of the blog.
Foundem points out that Google's lawyers admitted that the ranking algorithm should be described as a "subjective rating", even though the company's official propaganda says it is "objective". Foundem believe Google salah algorithm adjusts manually when they find it necessary, or desirable, for example, by competitive considerations.
Google spokespeople have repeatedly denied any previous manual intervention in the ranking algorithm. In your blog post after the EU issue was known, the formulations more cautious: "We understand how important the ranking may be of particular commercial sites, because a higher ranking typically means higher traffic. We are also the first to admit that our search is not perfect, but it is a difficult IT problem to crack. "
In other contexts, it has been argued that the algorithm still needs to be adjusted in order to prevent hits on malicious websites. The extension of this, one can understand that Google in some cases may reserve the right, or ability, to human intervention, such as in a critical situation.

Ciao originally promoted his complaint to the German competition authorities, and was later transferred from there to the EU. The German Authority has also received the second complaint to Google, among other things, from a trade organization for publishers, and map service Euro Cities. Also, the Italian Competition Authority received a complaint of publishers.
To date, the EU is not involved officially in the matter about Google Books, where the controversial and unresolved settlement formally applies only to the United States. EU investigating at the time the acquisition of DoubleClick, and trusted it in 2008. European personal protector have complained against the "Street View", and Google were also pressured by the EU to shorten the storage time of the search data.