The European Commission has opened an investigation into allegations that Google has abused a dominant position in the market for online searching, in breach of EU competition rules.

Google’s internet search engine provides for two types of search results: unpaid or ‘natural’ search results, and third party advertisements which appear at the top and right-hand side of the page (also known as sponsored links).

The Commission received complaints from service-providers about unfavourable treatment in both Google’s unpaid search results and its sponsored links. The Commission also received complaints that Google’s own services, i.e., YouTube or Google Maps, were prioritised in both categories of search results.

The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused its dominant position in the market for online searching by decreasing the likelihood that searches will produce results of competing vertical search services. Google is also being investigated for allegedly according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in an attempt to shut out its competitors.

The Commission will also investigate allegations that Google reduced the ‘Quality Score’ for sponsored links of competing vertical search services. The Quality Score is one of the factors determining the price paid to Google by advertisers. Reducing the Quality Score of a competitor would result in that competitor having to pay higher prices to Google for advertising.

The Commission’s investigation will further focus on allegations that Google imposed exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of advertisements, namely those which could be seen to compete with Google, on their websites. Other allegations suggest that such exclusivity obligations were also imposed on computer and software vendors in order to shut out competing search tools. Finally, the Commission plans to investigate alleged restrictions on the portability of online advertising campaign data to competing online advertising platforms.

There is no deadline by which the investigation must be completed. The length of the investigation will depend on the complexity of the case and the extent of the cooperation received from parties involved.