The algorithms that Google uses to rank its search results has come under scrutiny, as the California-based search engine giant said it had been contacted by the European Union competition regulator over three new complaints.

Foundem, a British price comparison Web site, and ejustice.fr – a French legal search engine were accusing Google of placing them further down the rankings than they ought to be because they were competitors, Google’s senior competition counsel Ms Julia Holtz said in a posting on Google’s policy blog. A third complaint had been made by Microsoft’s Ciao! over its search advertising service.


On Wednesday, the EU Commission said it was “examining” the complaints but had not opened a formal investigation yet.

Ms Siobhan Wraf, chief executive of Foundem, told BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme that Google was far from being the “fully neutral and comprehensive” search engine it purported to be. “Google has increasing started to use it as a marketing channel for its own services,” she said.

Google is eager to brush aside the significance of what has happened – saying that it was the “kind of scrutiny that goes with the territory when you are a large company,” while also hinting at the hand that Microsoft was playing.

The company had faced no problems with Ciao! until it was taken over by Microsoft’s Bing, said Ms Holtz, who also pointed out that Foundem was a member of ICOMP – a group funded partly by Microsoft. However, behind the bravado, there will be a lot of anxiety at Google.

Mr Joaquin Alumnia, who has taken over as Competition Commissioner this month, will be eager to show he is just as tough on companies as his predecessor, Ms Neelie Kroes, who over time earned nicknames such as “Nickel Neelie” and the “Iron Lady” of Brussels. Moreover, Brussels has been eager to flex its muscles over the policies pursued by technology giants across the Atlantic. Last May, it slapped Intel with a €1.1 billion fine over alleged anti-competitive practices against AMD, and an €899 million fine on Microsoft back in 2008.

Wednesday proved to be a tough day for Google – as criticism of its plans for an online book service mount, with thousands of authors demanding to be excluded- it suffered another embarrassing blow in Italy, as three executives were convicted of violating privacy laws in the country by posting a video which showed an autistic boy being bullied back in 2006.