sabato 27 aprile 2013

Più analiticamente, lo stato dell'arte del confronto tra Google e l'Antitrust europeo

Per avere un quadro completo di qual è lo stato dell'arte della vertenza Google/Antitrust UE vi propongo una sintesi delle contestazioni della commissione e dei rimedi proposti da Mountain View.

BACKGROUND

The Commission opened an investigation against Google in November 2010. In the context of this investigation, the Commission is looking at 17 formal complaints against Google's business practices.

Back in March 2013, the Commission has identified 4 areas of competition concerns related to Google's business practices in search in Europe:

1) Specialised search: the way Google displays links to its own specialised search services in its web search results. Google prominently displays links to its own specialised search services within its web search results and does not inform users of this favourable treatment. Hence, users are not aware of the promotion of Google's offer and competitors' results that are potentially more relevant are less visible and even sometimes not directly visible to users (at the very bottom)

2) Content usage: Google uses without consent content from competing specialised search services in its own offerings. Google thereby benefits from the investments of competitors, sometimes against their explicit will. Google said that the only way not to use the information is for those services to opt-out of all Google services as such!

3) Exclusivity agreements with publishers for the provision of online search advertising on their web sites: these requirements oblige publishers to obtain all or most of their online search advertisements from Google. This means that publishers could display no or limited online search advertisements from Google's competitors, which reduces the choice of online search advertisements they can offer to users of their web sites. Also Google's conduct limits their access to customers.

4) Contractual restrictions on the portability and management of online search advertising campaigns across Google's AdWords and competing platforms: Google contractually restricting the possibility to transfer online search advertising campaigns away from Google's AdWords and to simultaneously manage such campaigns on competing online search advertising platforms.

REMEDIES PROPOSED BY GOOGLE

1) Specialised search
· label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that users can distinguish them from natural web search results,
· clearly separate these promoted links from other web search results by clear graphical features (such as a frame), and
· display links to three rival specialised search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users;

2) Content usage
· offer all websites the option to opt-out from the use of all their content in Google’s specialised search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly affect the ranking of those web sites in Google’s general web search results,
· offer all specialised search web sites that focus on product search or local search the option to mark certain categories of information in such a way that such information is not indexed or used by Google,
· provide newspaper publishers with a mechanism allowing them to control on a web page per web page basis the display of their content in Google News,

3) Exclusivity agreements with publishers
· no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google;

4) Contractual restrictions on the portability and management of online search advertising campaigns
· no longer impose obligations that would prevent advertisers from managing search advertising campaigns across competing advertising platforms.

Nessun commento:

Posta un commento