Competition googly may prove tricky for Google

For internet users of today, Google is a synonym for web search. Such is the clout of the company that users don’t search for information, they google it. However, for the past few years the search engine giant has been grappling with anti-competitive charges in different jurisdictions and its predicament has taken a turn for the worse with the European Union Competition Commission recording the preliminary finding that the US-based web search company has abused its dominant position in the market for general internet search services.

Earlier, Google was also fined by India’s competition regulator for being uncooperative during investigation into complaints by Consim Info and Consumer Unity and Trust Society. While Google has some time to respond and allay the concerns of competition regulators, the crackdown on the company is already being seen as an opening for new players to emerge just as Google came up when Microsoft was busy negotiating competition charges.

Charges against Google

At the heart of competition complaints against Google is an attempt to ensure online search neutrality and objectivity, keeping in view the crucial role that search engines play in locating the relevant information from the vast mountain of information available online. Horizontal search using generic search queries is usually the first level of online consumer search and search results are displayed after ranking all the relevant websites in order of relevance. The search engine results page (SERP) gives links to these websites in decreasing order of relevance. Clearly, ranking on the SERP plays a crucial role in steering traffic to any website as almost 90% of clicks are on websites listed on the first page of the SERP.

Manisha Singh is a founding partner of LexOrbis, where Priya Anuragini is an associate.