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Europe Accuses Google of Monopoly Abuse

Posted by timothy on from the funny-there's-sort-of-a-government-monopoly dept.

bonch writes "European antitrust regulators are set to issue a 400-page statement of objections accusing Google of 'abuse of dominance' next month, the result of an investigation launched last year after complaints from rivals that Google manipulated ad pricing and barred advertisers from running ads on rival sites. If found guilty, Google could be fined up to 10% of its annual turnover, which is about $3 billion. Microsoft avoided a similar fine when it settled its European antitrust case and included a 'browser ballot' in Windows."

3 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh my god the sky is falling by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft is far from a has-been. They still dominate in desktop operating systems, and in all office software for business use. Not doing badly in servers too. Just because their efforts to expand into HPC and embedded have failed dismally doesn't make them a has-been.

  2. Re:End Game by InsightIn140Bytes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Considering how Google launders its money via European countries to gain 2.4% tax rate, that might be quite costly. And that also means giving up tons of business, revenue, users and future monopoly status on search.

  3. Makes no sense, to me by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google is not the only company providing a search engine, and Google cannot vendor-lock anybody. What is the problem?

    Also, how come Microsoft has been allowed to get away with brazen monopolistic abuse, 100 times worse than anything Google could possibly do, for decades?

    For example, Microsoft was caught, red handed, bribing officials during the OOXML scam; but that's okay?