European Commission to investigate Google

The European Commission is to investigate complaints that Google has abused its dominant position in the internet search engine market

The European Commission today launched an investigation into allegations that Google gives preferential treatment to its own services in search ranking results.

The allegations come from UK price comparison site foundem.co.uk, Microsoft online shopping service Ciao and French legal search engine ejustice.fr. All complainants suggest that their sites would rank higher in search results if the algorithms were not unfairly weighted towards Google's own services.

The investigation will also examine whether Google imposes "exclusivity obligations" on advertising partners preventing them from showing competing ads on their own sites.

Google's response so far has been conciliatory, according to a report in the Guardian. A Google spokesperson said:

"Since we started Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry, ensuring that ads are always clearly marked, making it easy for users to take their data with them when they switch services and investing heavily in open source projects. But there's always going to be room for improvement, and so we'll be working with the Commission to address any concerns."

If found guilty Google could be fined up to 10 per cent of its $23bn (£15bn) annual revenues.