European Commission Reopens Google Antitrust Investigation

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, European Commission regulators finally agreed to a settlement in the organization's long-running antitrust investigation of Google's search and advertising business. Unfortunately for Google, it didn't stick. The EC said today they're reopening the investigation after a large number of "very negative" complaints about the settlement. "The key objection to the proposed settlement, which would have allowed rival services to buy spaces at the top of search results pages, was that it would not prevent Google from favoring its own services, and would divert money from the rivals to Google even if they received clickthroughs from the adverts — rather than the zero-cost solution if they were ranked highly in 'organic' search results, and Google was prevented from putting its own commercial services above those." The Commission is also looking into other parts of Google's business, including its influence over mobile devices through Android.

Comments

The EU needs Google more than Google needs the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

I would just love to see Google suspend all European based operations, even if it is for a few days. Its a long coming with onerous the regulations the EU is placing on them that are nearly impossible to comply with. What would EU do? Would they erect a great internet firewall like china and block their own citizens from using Google's servers in other countries? Ordinary citizens would start using open proxies and VPN tunnels just to use google, youtube, and gmail. The EU would have lost the moral high ground on internet censorship.