EU opens antitrust probe of Google

Google's lawyers can never take a day off. The company gets sued in U.S. courts, it faces U.S. regulatory panels aiming to restrict its activities or its hauled before Congress to testify about Internet warfare.

Now, CNET News reports that European regulators want Google's attention. It wants to know how the company ranks search results and advertising. The request for information follows complaints from European businesses such as Foundem and Ciao, two price comparison sites, that Google penalized their websites in search results, because of competitive pressure.

"While we will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints, we are confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law," Google said in a blog post.

It's no surprise that Google is a target all over the world. Its share of the search and search advertising market in Europe is 90 percent--even higher than it is in the United States.

New products are being unwrapped all the time--Microsoft's Bing among them--to wrestle control of the search market from Google. And Google is introducing new products, too, keeping its hold on the market even tighter.

For more on Google:
- see this CNET.com article

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