Google Hits Back at EU Over Antitrust Charges
November 03 2016 - 11:40AM
Dow Jones News
Alphabet Inc.'s Google Thursday hit back at European Union
accusations that it abuses its dominant position with its shopping
and advertising services, ramping up its fight back against the
bloc's regulators.
The European Commission, the bloc's antitrust regulator, has had
Google under its microscope for years over concerns the search
giant abuses its dominance and has shut out rivals in various
markets. The continuing probe has already led to formal charges
aimed at several of Google's business practices, potentially
exposing Google to billions of euros in fines and demands that it
overhaul its operations.
On Thursday, Google again defended the way it places retailers'
ads for products on some of its search results by saying there is
no evidence that those ads hurt price-comparison websites. The
company contends that the commission looked at too small a set of
rival sites, and argues that on mobile devices most people shop
with dedicated apps anyway.
"The Commission's revised case still rests on a theory that
doesn't fit the reality of how most people shop online," said Kent
Walker, Google's general counsel, in a blog post dedicated
primarily to the company's response to the EU's shopping
charges.
Google last year rebuffed the EU's first set of shopping
charges, saying the commission failed to take into account the fast
growth of companies like Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc.
The commission circled back this July with an extra layer of
charges in the shopping case, sharpening its argument that Google's
comparison shopping service operates in a market separate from
those e-commerce platforms—an argument Google again rejected. In
separate charges, the EU in July also accused Google of breaching
EU antitrust rules by restricting how a website that offers a
Google search function can show advertisements sold by other
companies.
In response to the EU's shopping charges, Google said it rejects
the commission's proposed solution of providing what the company
called subsidized advertising space for price-comparison sites,
instead of the retailer ads that Google's usually shows.
Forcing Google to place competitors' product ads in its search
results "would just subsidize sites that have become less useful
for consumers," Mr. Walker said.
In the advertising case, Google argues its AdSense for Search
business has always faced competition from rivals like Microsoft
Corp. The company also said that it phased out complete exclusivity
requirements for Google ads in its AdSense for Search contracts in
2009.
In the coming days, Alphabet is also expected to fire off its
response to another set of EU charges issued in April over the tech
giant's conduct with its Android mobile operating
service—allegations that threaten to undermine how Google makes
money from mobile devices, which have rapidly become users' primary
portal to the internet.
Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com and Sam
Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 03, 2016 11:25 ET (15:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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