Communication about our defense against alleged anti-competitive conducts

Thèmes abordés

Communication, defense, anti-competitive conducts, European Commission, WebRadar, Commission's allegation, Google

Résumé du document

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).

Extraits

[...] I lack of evidence yet to answer this question. In any event, if the commission established an abuse of collective dominance position it would be harmful for us. Indeed, as mentioned previously, Google has set up more serious conducts than us. That's why we must prepare our defense. On one hand, the General Court has recognized that relates to the collective dominant position, the abuse of collective dominance can be also individual[19]. We could argue that google is the only responsible for the abuse. [...]

[...] The European Commission claims that a number of European and non-European companies have complained that your company is hindering competition in different ways. Thus, the so called practices that we would have put in place would be against the competition. That's why the commission is concerned with these practices. Indeed, as given above, the EC handles the compliance of the competition law. As soon as an infringement to the competition law has been made, the European commission is concerned about it. [...]

[...] law, their applications to the business world have not been as comparable. It is often said that U.S. antitrust law is aimed more at promoting competition, while EU law is more concerned with protecting competitors. While this assertion is probably a good starting point for explaining the differences, some might call it an oversimplification of fairly complicated issues[23]. This bias of the EU competition law is corroborated by a frequent complaint against the Commission. Indeed it tends, when applying articles 102 in cases such as Microsoft and Intel, not to concern itself with the maintenance of the competitive process but, instead, with the protection of competitors[24]. [...]

[...] Our practice has thus an anti-competitive effect. Finally, is there an objective justification for the tie? In other words, is the conduct good for consumers? This means ascertaining whether if the consumer prefers to see some advertising on every websites or just few of them? The right answer is probably the second. Indeed the customer will like rather to consult websites without advertisements. Finally, we could argue thus that this conduct is good for consumers. To conclude I will say that if the EC blames us for tying, we'll be able to use different argues. [...]

[...] This approach is in fact pro-competitive. Political considerations may have played a major role in the disparate treatment of Microsoft by US and EU regulators. When the antitrust action began, the Clinton administration's Justice Department exhibited a hostile attitude toward Microsoft's practices. When the Bush administration took over the case in 2001, some speculated that the administration would move toward a settlement in the case. While key administration and Justice Department officials deny any political pressure existed to settle on terms favorable for Microsoft, many critics decried the settlement as a politically motivated cave-in to big business interests. [...]