Google denies it abuses its marketshare

Google has denied allegations by a Microsoft-funded non-profit that it unfairly uses its estimated 70% marketshare in search to promote its own services against those of small websites.

Icomp, a non-profit organisation registered in London which receives a large amount of its funds from Microsoft, has been on the forefront of allegations that Google is engaged in less than fair trade practices.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that Microsoft is considering filing a formal complaint against Google for abusing its marketshare in search and advertising.

In a written response, Google India told DNA that a lot of the complaints are coming from website owners who fail to get their links sufficiently high up in its search results.

“We built Google for users, not websites... not every website can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be website owners who are unhappy about their rankings,” the company said in a written response to DNA’s queries.

Speaking to DNA, SV Divvaakar, the executive director for ICOMP in India said there are allegations that Google manually promotes its own content when users search for services like maps and local business listings.

Google India said the links -- such as providing a direct list of theatres playing Om Shanti Om when a user searches for Om Shanti Om - are a part of the evolution of search engines. Such services are meant to make it quicker and easier for consumers to find the information, by making it available from Google instead of visiting an external website.

“Google and other search engines have shifted away from “ten blue links” to embedding answers and different types of information directly in the search results because it’s best for users,” it said, giving an indication of its possible defense against a suit by Microsoft in Europe.

Divvaakar, who acknowledged Icomp’s links to Microsoft, also raised concerns about the fact that search engines (read Google) track their users areas of interest and use the information to deliver ads relevant to them.

“I have a friend who did some intensive searching on pregnancy and child birth, only to find himself flooded with similar ads in his email etc.,” he said.

Google and Microsoft-partner Facebook, like other major social networking and search firms, create ‘profiles’ of users based on which links they click on, which words they search on etc to show ads that are of interest to them.

“We’ll keep your searches [when signed in to Google in your account history so we can give you better and better results. But you can always delete specific searches you don’t want us to keep, pause your search history, or turn it off altogether at any time,” Google said.