European Antitrust Head Says examining Google’s Practices Is “excessive priority”

during the last year, European regulators have investigated the business practices of best U.S. tech companies, together with Amazon, facebook, and Google. the eu fee, the chief body of the ecu Union, filed formal antitrust charges towards Google, led with the aid of antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager. In a conversation with the Wall boulevard Journal, Vestager defined that the ecu’s center of attention is squarely on Google, towards whom she hopes to carry a slew of extra fees.

“The Google case is about misuse of a dominant position, to advertise yourself in a neighboring market now not on your merits however because you could,” Vestager informed the WSJ. the fees already introduced against Google by means of the european fee accuse the company of featuring its own buying pages more prominently than others in the web page’s search outcomes. Vestager stated that the buying outcomes case was “high precedence” but would take time to iron out, because of the analysis and knowledge comparability concerned.

but as Vestager factors out, this is only one method wherein Google has come beneath scrutiny out of the country. The ecu is pursuing a lot of other cases against the company, lots of which maintain vastly completely different practices. “What they’ve in fashionable is that the identify Google appears in every one, but aside from that they are very completely different,” she mentioned. “And therefore I do not bring to mind it as one Google case however literally as totally different investigations and totally different cases.”

Vestager specified probably the most different prices that European antitrust officers are looking into, including how Google bundles its native apps on Android smartphones:

now we have the continuing investigations and they are quite totally different, both in their pre-historical past but in addition in how they present themselves available to buy. the one who I opened myself on Android, we also provide excessive precedence but it is a totally different creature than the Google case because individuals don’t suppose a lot in regards to the operating device on their telephone. but folks who produce telephones or sell telephones or develop functions, they’re very preoccupied with the running machine. So we provide that a high priority. Then we are seeking to move ahead the merchandising investigation, the scraping, which may be very much associated to copyright considerations. It’s crucial to make sure we’re not trying to do what’s mainly for copyright. and then we’ve got the issues which might be parallel to the purchasing case.

while the e-commerce prices have some similarities to claims that Google provides preferential therapy to its personal apps on Android, each case should be handled individually, Vestager says:

The procuring case can have similarities after we in the end look at maps and travel and quite a lot of different associated services, since the complaints sort of inform the identical story. individuals feel or expertise that they’re both being demoted, or Google preferences its personal products and services. however there’s no such factor as you may have achieved one, you’ve finished them all. which you could’t do this. alternatively, in case you look at the purchasing case then there might be insights so as to most likely also be valid in the case of different neighboring markets. but it’s a very, very superb balance, as a result of we cannot do one case after which say the remaining is identical. In a union of regulation and with due course of, this cannot be the case.

Head over to the Wall street Journal to read the whole interview with Vestager.

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