91Èȱ¬

The European Commission's competition arm has begun investigating complaints that Google is abusing its dominant market position. The complaints have come from , and .

In a when it looked at the search market, Foundem set out its complaints.

"Google's overwhelming dominance of search and search advertising, coupled with its ability to arbitrarily penalise rivals and systematically favor its own services, makes the need for search neutrality particularly pressing."

On , Julia Holtz, senior competition counsel at the company, rebutted the complaints.

"Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners. This is not the case."

sees the hand of Google's rivals behind the complaints as Ciao is owned by Microsoft and Foundem is a member of ICOMP - a lobby group that is partly funded by the software giant.

"Regardless of whether or not Microsoft is involved in an indirect way, the EU has repeatedly expressed concerns about Google's market position and power and so is itself probably not unhappy to have an opportunity to examine these questions in the context of a formal investigation."

Mr Sterling also wondered about the outcome of the investigation.

"If there were to a finding against Google by the EU what would the remedy be: to 'freeze' Google's algorithm, to fully expose it to the market to make the algorithm more 'transparent'? As a practical matter neither of these outcomes is likely or plausible really."

For search veteran John Battelle, the in Google's history.

"In past writings I've intoned that Google was following the path of Microsoft in many ways, and suggested that at some point it may face the same kind of scrutiny - and potential enervation - as Gates&Co did back in the late 1990s with the DOJ."

He asks if the investigation is "Google's Microsoft Moment?"

The title of gives away his view. "IT BEGINS".

"Google will soon have nearly as much of a monopoly over the search business as Microsoft ever had in operating systems. Its move into display ads, meanwhile, will soon give it an even greater share of the overall online ad market."

He predicts the investigation will go beyond the preliminaries.

"This will start slow, but it could eventually get serious. It could also be a sign of things to come."

Links in full