Executives Press European Antitrust Chief on Google

With the European inquiry into Google’s search engine practices entering a third year, a group of 11 web businesses sent a joint letter to Europe’s top antitrust official, asking him to compel Google to change its business practices to ensure that smaller rivals are not unfairly harmed.

The letter, organized by one of the original complainants in the case, a British online shopping service called Foundem, asked the European competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, to take a hard line in ongoing negotiations with Google to produce “effective and future-proof” concessions that will protect small European competitors. “We are becoming increasingly concerned that effective and future-proof remedies might not emerge through settlement discussions alone,” the letter signed by the group stated. “In addition to materially degrading the user experience and limiting consumer choice, Google’s search manipulation practices lay waste to entire classes of competitors in every sector where Google chooses to deploy them.”