Google has always denied the European Union’s antitrust charges, but the search firm has finally formalized its response in a 150-page document sent to the EU and condensed into a post on the Google Europe blog.
Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel at Google, says the EU’s allegations that Google is illegally abusing its market dominance in anti-competitive practices that favor its own Google Shopping over other e-commerce aggregator websites are “wrong” and “unfounded.”
“We believe that the SO’s preliminary conclusions are wrong as a matter of fact, law and economics,” statedWalker.
“The SO says that Google’s displays of paid ads from merchants (and, previously, of specialized groups of organic search results) ‘diverted’ traffic away from shopping services. But the SO doesn’t back up that claim, doesn’t counter the significant benefits to consumers and advertisers, and doesn’t provide a clear legal theory to connect its claims with its proposed remedy.”
Walker argues that the EU has blatantly ignored the fact that Google is not the dominant player in e-commerce and is up against extremely fierce competition from other websites, including Amazon and eBay.
Full content: The Economist
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