Google is being accused of not respecting competition laws

Jun 2, 2014 14:10 GMT  ·  By

The Financial Conduct Authority, the British regulator for the financial services industry, has decided to look into Google’s recently introduced comparison ads.

The issue stems from a complaint filed by the price comparison sites in the United Kingdom, which believe that Google is competing with them in an unfair manner since it places its own products at the top of the search results.

The comparison ads that Google pushed are a form of AdWords and they present a series of products from competing companies.

Of course, the British investigation isn’t exactly a surprise, considering that Google has been facing antitrust accusations in a lot of countries around the globe. Even the deal the company has reached with the European Union isn’t safe from protests as businesses are accusing lawmakers of being too lax about the entire deal. They’re also particularly upset about the fact that the European commission that handled the issue has agreed to Google’s offer without consulting them once again, as it had previously done.

Truth be told, the Commission’s decision was perfectly understandable as it had to return Google’s proposals one too many times as the company’s competitors found something to complain about.

In the case that is just blooming in the United Kingdom, the Comparison Ads are triggered by certain types of searches. For instance, typing in “best” before a type of search, such as “credit cards,” you’ll notice the ads. They appear in a delimited box and Google enlists four options to choose from.

The area is clearly marked as “Sponsored” and you can follow any of the links there to a Google-made page where you can find out more details about what interests you.

Companies are upset about Google using its own site to promote such side-by-side comparisons since they offer similar tools themselves and see this as a personal offence since Google is stealing their visitors.

The United States Federal Trade Commission has already said “no” to an antitrust case against Google on the topic of vertical search results, but this wouldn’t be the first time the authorities in Europe take things a bit more seriously on the topic of both proper competition and user privacy.

The latter has been noticed and praised by Google’s own Larry Page recently, even if the company has a hard time adjusting to the new link removal policies in the European Union.