Competition: EU investigates Google

There is an interesting question that over-rides, in our view, the reference to the EC's Competition Commission - is Google regarded as a public service or as a business?

In the minds of those who search - and do little else - it's a public service. That was the ethos that Google projected when it burst on the search engine scene and proceeded to wipe out the competition.

Google did not, at least in this writer's view, beat off the others with a stick because its results were so much better. It won because it had a clean, clear interface that made it instantly accessible.

Indeed, as Google search results have become cluttered with (depending on country) auto-page previews (cached without the site owner's consent regardless of copyright laws where the original site is published) and other "features" that "clean white look" is compromised, reducing the attraction of the site. Further, the quality of the results has deteriorated dramatically in the past two years, making the decision to use Google much less clear cut.

But, we have to remember that Google is, in fact a business. It collects and aggregates data from across the internet, analyses it to order and delivers it, free of charge, to the user.

The EC is investigating "whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialised in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons (so-called vertical search services) and by according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in order to shut out competing services."

This is where it becomes rather sticky: forget whether Google does in fact do that - a more pertinent and pressing question is whether, if it does, it is doing wrong by doing so.

If so, then Ford does wrong for not putting an advert for, say, SAAB on the back of all of its cars - and giving it equal prominence with its own logo. That is clearly stupid.

For the user, the biggest problem - and here Google may be at fault - is the promotion to the top of search results of ad-farms (sites that exist for the sole or primary purpose of carrying search-engine friendly "keywords" and having no or virtually no content other than advertising. Sites that are either information by companies (PR or sales sites) or content sites (e.g. newspapers and magazines) are often pushed below many ad-farm results and therefore less likely to gain visitors. Many of the ad-farms are populated with adverts that are placed by Google. This criticism appears, at least on the face of the EC's announcement to be outside the remit.

A further criticism in the EC investigation is an allegation that "Google imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their web sites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools. Finally, it will investigate suspected restrictions on the portability of online advertising campaign data to competing online advertising platforms" Such lock-out deals are commonplace in print advertising, usually attached to a heavy discount against rate card. Again, there is an underlying question: what is wrong is a directory offering paid-for adverts alongside its free entries offering a discount to secure exclusive content?

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The final question before the EC is whether Google "lowered the 'Quality Score' for sponsored links of competing vertical search services. The Quality Score is one of the factors that determine the price paid to Google by advertisers. The Quality Score influences the likelihood of an ad to be displayed by Google and its ranking. If two advertisers are using the same key words, the site which has a lower Quality Score will have to offer a higher price to rank at the same place. "

Google may be in more trouble here: if it can be shown that it chooses competitors for this form of discrimination, then there is a point to be made, especially as Google's AdSense platform carries potentially fraudulent and other dubious ads which, if all ads were fully vetted, one would suspect should not make the cut.

In summary - there is much to complain about in relation to Google including its high-handed attitude to the law, to intellectual property and much more.

But making sure that it protects its own revenues that result from a product that it provides free of charge to millions of people doesn't, in all fairness, seem to be one of them.