Europe Gets Tough with Google

Joaquín Almunia, the EU’s chief antitrust officer, said of Google:

They are monetising this kind of [vertical search] business, the strong position they have in the general search market and this is not only a dominant position, I think – I fear – there is an abuse of this dominant position.

Almunia noted that Google gets about 90% of all EU search traffic, an even higher proportion than it gets in the U.S. Google’s competitors, including especially Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) are likely to press the EU for much tougher restrictions than the FTC imposed or that the EU will probably impose.