Google is now facing antitrust reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. After receiving three complaints the European Commission has launched a preliminary antitrust investigation into the search engine and search-advertising service of Google.
But at this stage, the authorities in Brussels indicated that they had not officially opened a formal investigation in the US internet company or its practices. The Commission added that it had already started the procedure of standard practice and that it was co-operating closely with national competition authorities. Google has been asked to comment on the complaints.
According to Google, one of the three complaints came from its competing company—Microsoft. The protest, from Ciao—the online service recently bought by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, echoes a complaint that had already been raised with the German regulators.
The other two complains about unfairly low place in Google’s search rankings were from Foundem—a UK price comparison service, and ejustice.fr—a French legal search engine.