This Article is From Sep 02, 2015

Google Antitrust Investigations Spread Across the Globe

Google Antitrust Investigations Spread Across the Globe
San Francisco: Google is quickly becoming the company government regulators around the world love to investigate.

The Silicon Valley giant's latest problems come from India. Last week, after a three-year investigation, India's antitrust authority, echoing similar complaints in Europe, sent Google a report outlining its concerns about search dominance and anti-competitive behavior.

The report from the investigative arm of the Competition Commission of India, citing the company's size and financial heft, argued that Google is abusing its dominant position in search and online advertising by ranking its own services ahead of those of competitors, according to people familiar with the report, which has not been made public.

The Indian commission adds to growing international scrutiny about how Google operates. The company appears to be facing a kind of regulatory contagion, with accusations in one jurisdiction hopping across borders and emboldening competitors and authorities elsewhere.

In Brazil, authorities are investigating whether Google favored its own services over others'. In Mexico, a local regulator, also mirroring regulation in Europe, has backed so-called right-to-be-forgotten proposals that allow people to request links about themselves be removed from online search results. And privacy watchdogs from Argentina to Hong Kong have questioned the amount of data that Google collects on its users.

The biggest of these threats is in Europe, where the region's antitrust authority has charged the company with abusing its dominance in search to benefit some of its own services and is also investigating other potential violations connected to Google's Android mobile phone software.

The European Commission's decisions are likely to influence regulators in other regions.

"It's a little hard to imagine others will take decisive action until they see what Brussels does," said William E. Kovacic, a professor of law at George Washington University.

While not explicitly related to Google's continuing antitrust problems in Europe, India's accusations, based on a complaint by the matchmaking website Bharat Matrimony and the watchdog group Consumer Unity & Trust Society, are similar.

Google has until Sept. 10 to respond to the commission, but it could ask for more time.
 
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