EU: Google’s corporate rearrange won’t insulate firm against antitrust probes

Brussels confirmed late on Tuesday that Google’s radical corporate shape-shifting that spawned parent company Alphabet would not “insulate” Google from the EU’s competition probes.

The European Commission’s competition spokesman Ricardo Cardoso told The Register:

“We have seen press reports that Google is carrying out a corporate restructuring. Google itself explained that it’s changing its structure to better run its different businesses. As far as the Commission is aware, there is no link to our competition investigations.”

In general, the Commission will always carry out its competition enforcement duties independently of the precise corporate structure of the companies under investigation. A company does not insulate itself from a competition investigation through a change in corporate structure.

One of the most persistent questions nagging commentators since Google announced its big changes has been how the new set-up will impact on the Chocolate Factory’s EU anti-trust case.

Google was accused by the European Commission of giving preference to its own services, scraping news sites and imposing anti-competitive terms on advertisers. The latter two activities were resolved early on in the negotiations, which have rumbled on for more than five years. However the issues of search and promotion of Google’s own services have proved trickier to solve.

In essence, the new Alphabet set-up won’t affect the competition case, since the investigation stemmed from historical complaints. However many have speculated that Google may have one eye on possible sanctions.

Full content: The Register

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