By Natalia Drozdiak
BRUSSELS--The European Union has extended Google Inc.'s deadline
until Aug. 31 to respond to charges that the U.S. company is
skewing its search results to favor its own comparison-shopping
service, a Google spokesman and the European Commission both said
Thursday.
The European Commission, the bloc's antitrust regulator, had
initially set a deadline for Aug. 17 after filing a formal
complaint against Google in April, charging it with favoring its
comparison shopping function in search results. It also opened a
separate probe into its Android mobile-operating system.
European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said Google had
requested additional time to respond to the charges in the shopping
search case.
"The commission analysed the reasons for the request [and] as a
result, it has granted an extension allowing Google to fully
exercise its rights of defense," Mr. Cardoso said.
It wasn't immediately clear why the company asked for an
extension.
Google earlier this week announced it would restructure its
company, separating its highly profitable search and advertising
business from its other ventures and organizing them under the
holding company Alphabet Inc.
The EU in response had said those changes wouldn't affect its
antitrust investigations into the company and that it was sticking
to its initial deadline for Google to respond to the formal charges
in the shopping search case.
Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires