The European Commission has launched an investigation into competition concerns at Google following complaints from three companies. The complaints from UK price comparison site Foundem, a French legal search engine called ejustice.fr and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing centre on their rankings in Google's search engine. According to Google, which confirmed the notification from the EC, the Foundem complaint argues that Google's algorithms demote the site in search results because it's a vertical search engine and so a direct competitor to Google. Ejustice.fr's complaint seems to echo these concerns, Google said. On the third complaint, Google said that after Microsoft acquired Ciao! in 2008 (renaming it Ciao! from Bing) Google started receiving complaints about its standard terms and conditions. The company initially took its case to the German competition authority, but it now has been transferred to Brussels. Google denied any attempt to choke off competition or hurt partners or end-users. The company said it will cooperate with the EC's questioning and is confident it does not violate EU competition law.
