Competition Law in the Global Context

In this paper, the case is that the European Commission claims that a number of European and non-European companies have complained that WebRadar (comprising 50 per cent of the market share of the relevant product online search and search advertising) is hindering competition in different ways . The first one is through 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. The second one is through using the contents of third parties’ web sites in WebRadar’s specialised web search services without previous consent. The third and last one is through inducing third party web sites (publishers) to buy all or most of their on line search advertisements from WebRadar. In April 2013 the European Commission published a first draft of commitments (based on Article 9 of Regulation 1/2003/EC) proposed by Google, WebRadar’s direct competitor, as mitigation for the Commission’s allegation of abusive conduct by Google. Unfortunately, after having launched the so-called market test about the effectiveness of the proposed remedies, many companies complained with the Commission stating that the remedies proposed by Google were unacceptable and finally, on the 20 December 2013, the European Commissioner Almunia declared that the commitments proposed by Google could not be accepted.

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