Google is rejecting the European Union’s charges that it abused its market power and the demand that it change the way it ranks online comparison shopping services in its search results, setting up a potentially long legal battle.
The search giant also challenges the EU regulator who is empowered to levy billions of euros in fines saying that the EU lacks the legal justification to demand it include rivals in its comparison shopping ads, arguing the EU would need to show that such ads are as essential as utility services.
In particular, Google argues that the EU’s charges fail to take into account the fast growth of companies such as Amazon and eBay that the company says pose a new competitive threat, which undercuts the case that it has harmed comparison shopping companies. The EU now could decide to immediately impose injunctions against Google, and announce fines as high as 10% of the company’s annual global revenue, or it could seek to negotiate a new settlement.
The New York Times reports powerful lobbying in Europe by regional publishers: it says that in recent weeks, several trade associations, including the Federation of European Publishers, have met with Friedrich Wenzel Bulst, a top European antitrust official, and other regulators to also push for stricter, Europe-wide limits on how Google and others may use publishers’ online content. Many publishers are pushing the rules as part of an expected overhaul of copyright policy from Günther Oettinger, a European commissioner with ties to Germany’s publishing industry, by the end of the year.
If the rules are approved, Google may eventually have to pay newspaper and magazine groups whenever links to their content are shown on Google’s European aggregation sites. Similar copyright rules already have been passed in several European countries, but have so far backfired against the publishers. In Germany, Google removed many local organizations from its news service, which led to a drastic fall in online traffic to some newspapers’ sites. Local publishers eventually agreed to waive any potential charges.
“The argument is simple enough: Publishers want money from Google,” says Till Kreutzer, a German lawyer who has campaigned against these new copyright proposals, according to the NYT. “Many European politicians are open to listening to that type of proposal.”