Google accused of exploiting dominant position in search results by Yelp and TripAdvisor

Ever wondered why the European Union has an antitrust framework? If you have been following technology, you’d know that the EU antitrust commission has stopped major corporations such as Microsoft from having an absolute monopoly in the market with its products.

Similarly, the Competition Commission of India had pulled up Google recently, as several regulatory agencies across the world have in the past. The reason was Google’s deliberate attempt to alter the ways to push its own businesses over competition. In effect Google was exploiting its dominating position in the industry.

According to a report in ReCode , two prominent internet companies Yelp and TripAdvisor have found that Google search results on a smartphone for these businesses had started getting buried beneath Google’s own businesses.

In a tweet, Yelp CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman posted his search results.

https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/668247307687559168

In reply to him, the CEO of TripAdvisor, Stephen Kaufer said:

https://twitter.com/kaufer/status/668549459308097536

Despite adding TripAdvisor in the search query, the results don’t seem to display TripAdvisor links up front.

Earlier, the European Union had accused Google of similarly stifling competition by altering search results. The European Commission had extended the deadline for replying to the charges to Aug. 31 from July 17, a Google spokesman said. This was the second extension for the company, which had originally been told to respond to the Commission’s charge sheet, or statement of objections, by July 7.

In September, the Competition Commission of India said its investigation arm has submitted its report on the alleged anti-competitive practices of Internet major Google and the regulator is awaiting comments on it from concerned parties. “The case has been going on for sometime. The investigator (Director General) has given the report,” Competition Commission of India (CCI) Chairman Ashok Chawla said.

It’s worth noting that these allegations come at a time when as a company the group is now called Alphabet which changed its corporate philosophy to do the right thing, instead of doing no evil. We hope Google would do the right thing, which also implies not doing evil.