European Commission opens Google antitrust probe

The European Commission announced Tuesday that it has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Google Inc., setting up what could be the first major test of whether the online search giant abuses its dominance to enrich itself and elbow out rivals.

The panel in Brussels, which represents the 27 nations in the European Union, said it will explore a number of specific allegations by competitors. If they are found true, it would show a pattern of Google exploiting its market power to bolster its advertising business and quash competition in other online services.

The commission’s move follows years of growing scrutiny of Google’s business practices among rivals, public policy groups and governments, but there have been few concrete actions among US regulators.

Google increas Share oF Web Search

NEW YORK: Google increased its share of the US online search market in April while Yahoo! and Microsoft both lost ground, according to figures released by tracking firm comScore.

ComScore said that 64.2 percent of the searches conducted by Americans in April were at Google sites, up from 63.7 percent in March.

Yahoo!’s share of the search market slipped 0.1 percentage points in April to 20.4 percent while Microsoft saw its share fall by 0.1 percentage points to 8.2 percent.

Search engine Ask held steady at 3.8 percent while AOL saw its market share fall by 0.3 percentage points to 3.4 percent, comScore said.

The tracking firm said Americans conducted 14.8 billion searches in April, up three percent over March, with Google accounting for 9.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! with three billion and Microsoft with 1.2 billion.

---

Google increas Share oF Web Search was first posted on May 19, 2009 at 10:51 am.