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| Ramon Tremosa i Balcells, a lawmaker from Catalonia in the European Parliament, called for formal charges against Google |
An outspoken European critic of Google said Friday that European Union antitrust regulators should bring formal charges against Google, after new documents showed that a report had recommended an American agency take a similar step three years ago.
“This new element and evidence is crucial and could not come at better time,” the lawmaker, Ramon Tremosa i Balcells, said in a statement.
Many of the same issues concerning Google now under investigation in Europe were also part of the earlier investigation led by the Federal Trade Commission. The American agency is facing a flurry of awkward questions about its handling of that investigation after documents revealed that at least one internal report had recommended stronger action. The documents were first reported on Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
The F.T.C.’s decision to decline to take a tougher stance showed that Europe’s scrutiny of Google was not a “protectionist E.U. war against a U.S. company,” said Mr. Tremosa, a lawmaker from Catalonia in the European Parliament.
The antitrust case against Google in Europe has already gained more traction than in the United States. But like their American counterparts, competition officials at the European Commission in Brussels have been loath to bring formal charges against such a successful and powerful company.
Instead, the Commission has spent much of the past five years trying to reach a settlement with Google that would end the case — focused on its search and advertising businesses, and on whether it stacks its search results to favor its own products — without a fine or a formal finding of wrongdoing.
But those efforts to reach a settlement with Google have repeatedly run into a brick wall.
Google’s rivals and powerful groups like publishing companies in France and Germany have successfully complained that most of the changes proposed by Google have been insufficient to solve the antitrust concerns identified by regulators.
European Union officials said on Friday that Margrethe Vestager, the competition commissioner who took over the job from Joaquín Almunia of Spain late last year, was continuing to assess complaints against the company.
“As Commissioner Vestager has said a number of times, to take the Google investigation forward and get it right, she is taking the necessary time to update information in the files and form her own view, before deciding on next steps,” Ricardo Cardoso, a spokesman for the Commission, said in a statement in response to reports about the F.T.C.’s investigation.
“It is very important that the application of competition law in individual cases remains independent from politics and that antitrust procedures are not put into question,” said Mr. Cardoso. “It is the Commission’s obligation to respect the rights of all the parties involved and to remain neutral and fair; these are crucial values for competition law enforcement,” he said.
Source: Bits
Photo Credit: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated Press
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