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EU: Vestager considering action against Google’s content scraping

By  |  October 16, 2016

The EU’s antitrust regulator, who has accused Alphabet unit Google of stifling competition in three separate cases, left open the possibility of further action against the US technology giant.

Complaints have been made about Google’s practice of copying content from websites without payment in what is known as scraping. Complainants include News Corp, Getty Images and German publishers.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s Competition Commissioner said this was not on her radar for now but did not rule out future action. She is concentrating on the three ongoing cases, the first of which has dragged on since 2010. Antitrust cases typically take between three to eight years or even longer.

“We are not taking any decisions yet,” Vestager told reporters on the sidelines of a conference organized by the International Bar Association on Friday.

The European Competition Commission has in the last year charged Google of using its market power to promote its own products at rivals’ expense after a spate of complaints from European and US companies.

Full Content: Reuters

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