EU antitrust against Google, at the risk of heavy penalties – PianetaCellulare.it

Written by Fabrizio Ventre, the 2.4.15

The European Antitrust should start the first cases against Google in the coming days. The American giant had recently been put under the magnifying glass in the eponymous body US, revealing some practices potentially suspicious, although the American case was closed without any request.

The documentation American, Europe could instead find reasons to punish Google, the center of attention for practices restricting competition.

Among the hot spots, the de facto monopoly of Google in terms of search engine, online advertising and the alleged actions, under investigation, according to which Google would deliberately damaged the visibility of competing services to facilitate the own (remember the case Kelkoo, the price comparison of Microsoft, literally disappeared a few years ago by the research).

Today, Google, update after update, is literally invading search results of its engine, taking away traffic and visits to online services competitors.

In the beginning was the weather to be hit, with predictions that appear on Google without even having to open a site.
 Then came the sports results, the answers to direct research and to finish maps and advertising all inclusive, so much so that today on the research Local, almost looks unlikely to be visible without buying ads from Google itself.

In the US, the functions internal to the search pages are even more persistent, covering stock quotes and flights.

In addition, Google has recently announced entry into the field of tariff comparisons, for now limited to insurance.

This is, obviously, a real invasion, across different sectors, with practices that absorb much of the traffic to the detriment of the existing players in the sector who would be so, literally plundered traffic.

Even search algorithms are often put on trial, with sites of excellent quality penalized and many others, scrapper sites and spam sites, instead placed in the top positions.

I remember that in the past, the Antitrust Authority had forced Microsoft the so-called Browser Baloon, ie the requirement to allow users to install the browser competition being installed on your computer desktop.