The incoming European Commissioner for digital economy and society, Günther Oettinger, is not a big fan of Google

Oct 1, 2014 09:25 GMT  ·  By

Google is getting ready for some tough times in Europe as some important voices within the Commission are not so lenient about the company’s way of dealing with competition.

The incoming European commissioner for digital economy and society, Günther Oettinger, has revealed on Monday that it was him that blocked the Google case from settling a few months back.

“If I hadn’t been opposed to it, the Google case would have been settled back in March. The Google case was proof of the energetic approach of the pf the commission… a textbook example of how the commission can take decisions in a robust way,” Oettinger said, quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

Joaquin Almunia, the European Competition Commissioner that has so far handled the Google case, wanted to settle the deal back in Spring, allowing Google just a few concessions about the location they’d be displaying competition products in their search results and so on. They very nearly came to an understanding with Google without consulting its competitors, after numerous proposal rejections.

This, of course, didn’t sit well with these companies and they spent the summer protesting the call. Microsoft went as far as to test out a modified version of its search engine to place competitor products in the same places where Google intends to place theirs to see if there were any clicks and came up with a disappointing result. Of course, there’s the argument that Bing barely gets any traction in Europe and it doesn’t have the same impact as Google would.

Google’s proposal crumbled over the summer

Joaquin Almunia revealed last week that the case had been reopened following fresh evidence and solid arguments and urged Google to come up with a better settlement offer or face a serious threat from the European Commission, such as a penalty of up to 10 percent of the company’s annual revenue.

“Neutrality of the search engine is clearly important. Clearly there are implications for other sectors as well…. that’s where we’ve got to steer in the interests of the European sector,” Oettinger said regarding the way Google needs to do business.

Google’s adversaries in Europe, including Yelp and Trip Advisor, recently launched a new website called “Focus on the User,” trying to get the company to go back to its roots.

These companies are none too happy about the way Google links to its own Google+ social network over others. “What we object to is Google+ being used to attempt to provide answers to users’ questions without having to be vetted by the organic algorithm in the same way the other search results are required to, and then Google giving preference to Google+ over the results Google’s own unbiased algorithm indicates provide the best answers to the users’ questions,” the site said.