Abstract
Last Monday, we received a request for information from the DG COMP of the European Commission. The European Commission claims that a number of European and non-European companies have complained that our company is hindering competition in different ways, in particular:
- By treating more favourably, within the search results of the company's web search engine, links to WebRadar's own specialised web search services, putting the links of competitors in a less favourable position;
- By using the contents of third parties' web sites in WebRadar's specialised web search services without previous consent;
- By inducing third party web sites (publishers) to buy all or most of their on line search advertisements from WebRadar.
It is important to note that in April 2013 the European Commission published a first draft of commitments proposed by Google, our direct competitor, as mitigation for the Commission's allegation of abusive conduct by Google (similar to the conduct now contested to our company).
