Speaking on behalf of the informal press publishers’ coalition, the President of the complainant VDZ (German magazine publishers’ association), Prof. Dr. Hubert Burda, states: “If Google does not come up with fundamentally improved proposals very soon, we call on the Commission to use its full legal powers, including an immediate Statement of Objections with effective remedies. Fair and non-discriminatory search with equal criteria for all websites is an essential prerequisite for the prosperous development of the European media and technology sector.”
The President of complainant BDZV (Federation of German newspaper publishers), Helmut Heinen, underlines: “As a minimum requirement, Google must hold all services, including its own, to exactly the same standards, using exactly the same crawling, indexing, ranking, display, and penalty algorithms. Google must not use third party content beyond what is truly indispensable for navigation purposes in the horizontal search without prior consent.”
Complainants and interested parties were invited by the Commission to “market test” Google’s proposed remedies by 27th June. Based on the outcome, the Commission may decide whether or not to accept Google’s offer and make the commitments binding on Google, thereby closing the investigation without a prohibition decision or a fine.
The Commission is acting because it believes Google’s actions create “potential harm to consumers in terms of reduced choice, quality and innovation.” In addition, the Commission stated that intervention is critical now so that Google’s dominant position in web search of over 90% does not preclude the possibility of entry for other competitors in neighbouring markets.
The President of the Spanish complainant AEDE (Spanish association of daily newspaper publishers), Luis Enríquez, states: “In short, Google’s proposed remedies do not address the overarching problems and fundamental harms that Google’s conduct causes in search related markets and none of them aims at restoring effective competition. Instead, the proposed remedies place minor constraints on Google that would, at best, modestly alter its behaviour but which in practice have no effect on the structure of the market. In some ways, they might actually make matters worse by entrenching dominance and misleading consumers. Hence, we all believe that more effective remedies including structural measures are justified and necessary as a means to restore the dysfunctional market to competition.”
Google is proposing several commitments to bring the investigation to an end. In particular, to label their own preferred links to its own sites in search results. Publishers say that this will mislead consumers into thinking these were somehow tailor made results to their search queries and interests, thereby causing even greater harm to competition.
Google will also provide website operators with the option to block their websites from access by Google, which is no option at all for publishers given Google is now super dominant and the de-facto gateway to the internet. Press publishers’ concerns are increased by the fact that queries entered by European users on Google.com, Google Chrome, Voice Search, or Google search engines integrated on other sites are excluded from the proposed remedies.
A detailed paper explaining the adverse effects of Google’s practices is available here.
The informal coalition consists of the formal complainants from the press sector Bundesverband Deutscher Zeitungsverleger (BDZV), Verband Deutscher Zeitschriftenverleger (VDZ), Asociación Editores de Diarios Españoles (AEDE) and their European Associations and its respective members European Magazine Media Association (EMMA), European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA), European Publishers Council (EPC) and Online Publishers Association Europe (OPA Europe).
Additional signatories are: Aikakausmedia / Aikakauslehtien (AKM), Association luxembourgeoise des éditeurs de journaux (AL), Asociación de Revistas de Información (ARI), Czech Publishers’ Association (CPA), Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali (FIEG), Mediebedriftenes Landsforening, National Newspapers Of Ireland (NN), The Newspaper Society (NS), NDP Nieuwsmedia (NDP), Polish Chamber of Press Publishers (WP), Professional Publishers Association (PPA), Sanomalehtien Liitto (SL), Sveriges Tidskrifter (SMPA), The Swedish Media Publishers’ Association (TU), Union des Editeurs de la Presse Périodique (UPP), SCHWEIZER MEDIEN, Austrian Newspaper Association (VÖZ)
