Investigations should be carried outThe European Commission did the right thing on Tuesday when it opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abused its dominant position in online search to help its other businesses at the expense of rivals, said the New York Times in an editorial published Thursday. Excerpts: It is far from certain that Google has done anything wrong. Still, it is the dominant search engine in the world, and it is no longer just about general search. Google has ventured into a range of other businesses, like comparison shopping, mapmaking and book selling.This raises a concern that it could leverage its clout in search to benefit other businesses at the expense of competitors, tinkering with its secret algorithm to favor Google services and to lower rivals in the search results. The European Commission said it would also look into whether Google lowered the “quality score” of rivals so they would have to pay more to place advertising links alongside searches. It added that it would investigate whether Google barred sites that use its advertising systems from displaying ads for Google rivals. The commission said it hasn't determined whether Google broke antitrust law. Indeed, the case follows only a handful of complaints, including from a French legal search tool, a comparison shopping site in Britain and another in Germany that is partly owned by Microsoft. Google argues that tweaking the search algorithm to improve its responses to users' queries will inevitably bump some sites down the ranks. Like other search engines, it puts a chart from its own finance service on top of search results for a share price. Its comparison shopping site comes up at the top of many product searches. But Google says that that is because it's a better result. __
