Google contests EU antitrust charges on comparison shopping, AdSense

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images/Urich Baumgartgen)

Google has rebutted the European Commission's anti-competitive charges against the ad giant's alleged abuse of dominance in its price comparison, specialised search services, and AdSense businesses.

The company—after a number of deadline extensions from Brussels—came out fighting in a blog post penned by Google's chief counsel Kent Walker that was published on Thursday:

In recent years, we’ve improved the format of our ads to include more informative displays with pictures, prices, and links where you can buy products. Showing more useful ads benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, you, our users.

That’s why we disagree with the European Commission’s argument that our improved Google Shopping results are harming competition.

It claimed that EC antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's charge on the company favouring its own price comparison and specialised search—or, as Google prefers to describe it, "shopping services"—over its competitors carried too "narrow" a definition, arguing that it excluded the "competitive significance" of Amazon and other players in that market. Walker said: