Google Rival Says Search Giant Feigned Ignorance Over EU Case

Foundem, a UK price-comparison website that helped trigger a European Union antitrust complaint against Google, accused Google of deliberately feigning ignorance about what’s at stake in the case.

Google “is well aware” that the EU’s investigation “is not and has never been about shopping,” Foundem said. “It has always been about product price comparison” and “traffic figures for Amazon and EBay -- interesting though they are -- have no place on any graph purporting to represent the state of the product price-comparison market.”

“No one is suggesting that Google be prevented from entering this or any other market,” said Foundem. “At the moment, Google’s gatekeeper status and the virtually imperceptible nature of search engine bias allows Google to commandeer the traffic and revenues of virtually any sector of its choosing.”