European Commission still assessing Google over anti-competition issues

The European Commission is still working on its anti-trust probe into Google to determine whether the company is abusing its dominant position in the search market, almost a year after opening the case.

Joaquín Almunia, vice president of the EC responsible for competition policy, said at a competition conference in Florence that the investigation has several key factors to consider.

"Google is the browser of choice for very many of us, but dominance is not the same as abuse of dominance," he said.

"Abuse is a conduct that protects or extends dominance by illegitimate means, and we still have to conclude whether this is the case for Google."

Almunia added that the complexity of the technology used by Google, and the way it is funded, makes it difficult to assess the company's true position in the market.

"Among other aspects, we need to consider carefully in our analysis whether Google operates a two-sided platform, where advertisers' fees finance a service that users do not have to pay for," he said.

"This aspect of Google's business is forcing us to take special care as we conduct our assessment of the relevant product and geographic markets, which is an important stage in our assessment."

Google has been accused of abusing its position by several companies, notably Microsoft, and has faced similar investigations in the US.

V3 contacted Google for comment, but had not received a reply at the time of publication.

Almunia also gave some insight into the difficulty of assessing technology mergers, explaining that the Intel-McAfee deal presented some unique challenges.

"The digital sectors are also the scene of sophisticated strategic interactions. Security solutions firms, such as McAfee, need to know how a microprocessor works in great detail to make its products effective," he said.

"Our concern was that, if the merged company kept this information to itself, other security solution products would not work well on systems based on Intel chips."

The EC cleared the Intel-McAfee merger, but Almunia expects more issues to arise owing to the interlinking nature of the technology world and as further mergers occur, citing the proposed deal between Microsoft and Skype as one such example.