The authorities of the European Union will actively prosecute Alphabet, the parent company of Google, on several fronts, from contracts with advertisers to the Android operating system. To give this news is right Margrethe Vestager, head of the EU antitrust, the clearest sign that Big G will have to deal with new accusations on the competition front.
The US giant therefore found itself in the crosshairs of the new commissioner. Back in April, Vestager was the first global antitrust authority to formalize charges against Big G. "I don't think of it as a single case against Google, but literally as several investigations and several cases," he specified. “What they have in common is that the Google name appears on each one, but other than that they are very different from each other.” After a five-year investigation that touched many areas of the giant's business, the accusations of the EU of the month of April have proved to be unexpectedly circumscribed e focus exclusively on the shopping assistance service. Industry insiders have suggested that the union could aim to close this case before filing any new bosses.
But Vestager instead specified the presence of other lines of investigation of equal importance. The question of the shopping assistance service "is the top priority, but it will take time," she admitted. “We have the answer from Google and we are now analyzing it.” Furthermore, she warned that a ruling in this regard may not easily apply to related markets that the Union is examining, explaining that the formalization of further charges may be necessary. "The case shopping could have similarities to the speech maps and travel, plus a number of other associated services, when they are finally investigated, because the related complaints somehow tell the same story,” Vestager said. “But that doesn't imply that having faced one, all the others have been covered. It's impossible".
In addition, he specified that a separate proceeding on Android is "of the highest priority" for the European authorities. “It's a very different story than shopping because people don't pay much attention to the operating system that runs their phone,” but it's manufacturers and application developers who are hugely involved on this front. But the EU is "also trying to carry forward" distinctions investigations into the alleged abuse of a dominant position by Google in the context of advertising contracts and the accusation of copying content owned by competitor websites, the commissioner recalled.
