TripAdvisor adds weight to EU competition complaints about Google

The travel review website business is the latest company to complain to the Commission that Google is abusing a dominant market position and in so doing is breaching EU competition rules. The Commission is already investigating whether Google manipulates search results to put competitor search companies at a disadvantage and whether it has unfairly placed restrictions on advertisers. The Commission is expected to report on its findings after Easter.

TripAdvisor has not divulged the precise details of its complaint, but said it refers to "anti-competitive and unfair practices by Google that harm the marketplace and consumer welfare," according to a report by news agency Bloomberg.

"We hope that the Commission takes prompt corrective action to ensure a healthy and competitive online environment that will foster innovation across the Internet," TripAdvisor said.

Google said that it had yet to see TripAdvisor's complaint but said it has been working with the Commission since it opened its investigation in 2010 to "explain" to the regulator "how our business works", according to a report by the BBC.

Google operates a rival service to TripAdvisor in that it allows users to post reviews of hotels and restaurants on Google Places. Expedia, which operates another travel review site, has already complained to the Commission about allegedly unfair practices Google employs.

"Expedia filed a complaint with the European Commission that details specific business and search practices by Google that constitute a violation of European Union competition and consumer protection laws," Brent Thompson, vice president of government affairs for Expedia, said in a statement on Monday, according to a report by technology news site ZDNet. "The complaint offers evidence of how Google's conduct harms not only competition, but consumers."

Thompson called for "strong action" to be taken by the Commission in order to "restore a fair and competitive marketplace in online search," according to the report.

An appearance near the top of Google's 'natural' search rankings or its paid-for contextual adverts is a lifeline for many companies because of the near-total dominance that the company has in the European search engine market. It lists sites and services according to its own secret ranking system.

The European Commission outlined the scope of its Google investigation late in 2010.

"The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialised in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons (so-called vertical search services) and by according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in order to shut out competing services," the Commission said at the time.

"The Commission will also look into allegations that Google lowered the 'Quality Score' for sponsored links of competing vertical search services. The Quality Score is one of the factors that determine the price paid to Google by advertisers."

Search engines Foundem and ejustice.fr and Microsoft-owned price comparison site Ciao are among the companies to have complained about their position in Google rankings.

Last year Microsoft claimed Google hid information from search engine results that made it difficult for non-Google search engines, like Bing which Microsoft operates, to link to Google-owned YouTube. The company claimed the "technical measures" Google employed meant it could not compete on an equal footing with Google's own search engine.

Microsoft itself spent more than ten years fighting European competition law investigations that resulted in it being hit with hundreds of millions of Euros in fines.

In 2010, the Commission also said that it would look into restrictions allegedly placed on advertisers by Google as part of its investigation.

"The Commission's probe will additionally focus on allegations that Google imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their web sites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools," it said. "Finally, it will investigate suspected restrictions on the portability of online advertising campaign data to competing online advertising platforms."