News release, Joaquín Almunia Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy: “In November 2010, the Commission launched an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google had abused a dominant market position. This followed a number of complaints. We have looked at those complaints and at others we received since the opening. And we have conducted a large-scale market investigation…Our investigation has led us to identify four concerns where Google business practices may be considered as abuses of dominance…[snipped]

• first, in its general search results on the web, Google displays links to its own vertical search services.
• Our second concern relates to the way Google copies content from competing vertical search services and uses it in its own offerings. Google may be copying original material from the websites of its competitors such as user reviews and using that material on its own sites without their prior authorisation.
• Our third concern relates to agreements between Google and partners on the websites of which Google delivers search advertisements.
• Our fourth concern relates to restrictions that Google puts to the portability of online search advertising campaigns from its platform AdWords to the platforms of competitors.”