Google faces a total of nine antitrust complaints which EU regulators are now investigating, two sources said today, as rivals ramped up the pressure on the search engine.
The European Commission has up to now only confirmed four cases against Google. The addition of fresh complaints could broaden the EU watchdog's ongoing probe and pile pressure on the company to strike a settlement.
"The Commission has nine formal complaints now. The new complaints come from small companies," said one of the sources who declined to provide details because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The second source said three cases came from national regulators while two were fresh complaints.
The Commission opened an investigation into Google in November last year following allegations by three small companies that Google demoted their sites in web search engines because they were rivals.
Microsoft ratcheted up its rivalry with Google by filing its first-ever complaint to the EU watchdog in March this year, claiming that Google systematically blocked internet search competition
Separately Google lost a bid to seal some papers in a patent-infringement lawsuit filed last year by a unit of software maker Oracle.
Claiming attorney-client privilege, Google sought to protect parts of a transcript of a hearing about expert witnesses containing references to a company document, US district judge William Alsup in San Francisco said in an order yesterday.
The document mentioned is "an incomplete draft of an e- mail message" and "never was sent to anyone", he wrote in denying Google's request. "Thus, the document is not a communication of any type, much less a communication protected by the attorney-client privilege."
Oracle America sued Google, alleging patent infringement over the use of Java technology in Google's Android operating system, according to an amended complaint filed October 27th.
Judge Alsup wrote in a July 22nd filing that the passage in question was from an internal e-mail in 2010 to Google executive Andy Rubin saying "the technical alternatives to using Java for Android 'all suck' and stating, 'we conclude that we need to negotiate a licence for Java under the terms we need.'"
Willa Lo, a Google spokeswoman, didn't immediately return voice and e-mail messages seeking comment on the ruling.
Reuters, Bloomberg
