BRUSSELS—News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission over Alphabet Inc.'s Google, accusing the U.S. tech giant of leveraging its dominance in the search for news articles, a person familiar with the matter said.

News Corp is concerned that Google reinforces its dominance in general search by "scraping" or copying content from publishers to display the results of news articles, according to the person. News Corp alleges that if the publisher doesn't want the content to be copied at all, Google then wouldn't show the articles in the results at all, the person said.

Google wasn't immediately available for comment.

The European Commission is already investigating allegations that Google copies or "scrapes" rival Web content, but so far hasn't issued any formal charges in the area.

The European Union has issued formal charges against Google for allegedly skewing search results to favor its own shopping service and, according to people familiar with the matter, could also soon file formal charges against the company over its conduct with its Android mobile operating system.

News Corp filed a separate complaint regarding Google's competition practices last April, but has declined to disclose further details about that complaint.

Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 18, 2016 06:45 ET (10:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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