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Going tough for Google in Europe after complaints
by Anupreet Kaur - February 25, 2010 - comments
Google is a tough competition for its rivals in Europe. It has acquired around 80 percent market share in Europe.
Search engine and advertising giant Google is in trouble due to complaints against it by three European websites.
The three European websites—Foundem, a British price comparison site, Ejustice .Fr, a French legal search engine, and Ciao from Bing, a Microsoft owned shopping site--claimed that Google is using 90 percent of its share in U.K. search market to stifle competition.
European Commission is to launch an antitrust probe against Google in response to the complaints received.
Allegations against Google
The Italian court has accused three Google executives and a former employee of Mountain View, California-based company of violating privacy laws.
The executives were accused of showing an online video of an autistic boy teased by his classmates in Turin, Italy. The video was submitted in 2006 on Google video.
The prosecutors claimed that the video violated Italian privacy protections, and the Italian court finally declared six month jail terms for the executives not present during the trial and vindicated a marketing manager.
There are antitrust allegations against Google in Germany too. As a result, the company is planning to shutter its street view service from there.
Not only this, during December, a Paris court asked Google to stop digital scanning of French books for its library.
Google has taken up the situation in a positive manner. Julia Holtz, Google senior competition counsel wrote in a blog “The question [the complaints] ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners. This is not the case."
Google’s status in Europe tough on competitors
Google is a tough competition for its rivals in Europe. It has acquired maximum market share in Europe as compared to U.S.
It is believed that the strong position of Google in the European markets has led to such claims by its competitors. Nearly 80 percent of the European market comes under Google.
In 2009, Google generated more than half of the revenue from its overseas operations. Around 52 percent or $3.5 billion revenue came up from International Markets in the three months period ended Dec.31.
Nearly $3 billion or 13 percent of its revenue came from Britain.