A French company has filed an additional antitrust complaint against Google, accusing the search giant of abusing its dominant position in online search.
Google said the filing is from the parent company of a eJustice.fr, which has already filed an antitrust complaint against Google.
"We have been working closely with the European Commission to explain many different parts of our business. While we have always tried to do the right thing for our users and advertisers, we recognize that there's always room for improvement," Google said in a statement. "In terms of this particular complaint, we'd just like to make clear that 1PlusV is the parent company of eJustice, which is one of the existing complainants."
The most recent complaint comes from 1plusV, which owns eJustice.fr, a French legal search engine. Back in February 2010, Google announced that the European Commission said it had received complaints from three companies about "whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners." Those companies were Foundem, ejustice.fr, and Ciao! from Bing. Julia Holtz, Google's competition counsel, said at the time that two of the companies - Ciao! from Bing, a Microsoft acquisition; and Foundem - had ties to rival Microsoft. Ciao was purchased by Microsoft in 2008.
In November, the EU opened a formal investigation into the complaints.
At the time, Google published a blog post in which Google stressed that it built its search engine for users, not Web sites. "It may seem obvious, but people sometimes forget this - not every Web site can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be Web site owners who are unhappy about their rankings. The most important thing is that we satisfy our users," wrote Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, and Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of product management.
"The complaint has not yet been received," an EU spokesman said via e-mail. "Once the Commission receives the complaint, it will give Google the opportunity to comment on the allegations raised before deciding on what, if any, further steps to take."