EU launches antitrust investigation against Google

The European Union launched an antitrust investigation into a complaint from three European Internet companies. These are the German search engine Ciao, the French legal search engine EJustice.fr, as well as the British shopping search engine Foundem. They all complain that unfair competition from Google harms their business. Foundem also claims that the respondent has special filters for lowering Foundem in search results, despite the fact that Google controls 90% of the UK search market.

Google has already commented on the situation and brought to the attention of the public that Ciao is owned by Microsoft (they were bought in 2008 for about $ 500 million and the search engine is now called Ciao! From Bing ). In addition, Foundem is a member of the ICOMP organization, partly funded by Microsoft.