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"Are Google search results purely algorithmic, or does the \u201Cdo no evil\u201D empire occasionally inject editorial oversight in the name of stifling competition?  \nAccording to three European companies \u2014 one of which is owned by Microsoft \u2014 the latter is true, and according to The Telegraph, their allegations have led the European Commission to launch an investigation into the search giant.\nSpecifically, UK price comparison site Foundem and French legal directory ejustice.fr allege that Google demotes their respective sites in search rankings because they potentially represent a threat to Google's ad revenue.  Meanwhile, the nature of Microsoft-owned shopping site Ciao's complaint is not immediately known, though Google implies in a blog post that the dispute is over AdSense terms and conditions.\nGoogle goes on to write on its European Public Policy blog that it \"will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints\" but \"is confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law.\"  \nThis isn\u2019t the first time Google will face scrutiny from regulators.  In the U.S., its acquisition of DoubleClick was closely examined by the FTC before eventually winning approval.  Meanwhile, antitrust concerns killed a deal that Google had made with Yahoo for ad serving back in 2008.  Yahoo has since made a deal with Microsoft that was just approved last week after a lengthy review.\nThere is of course an irony involved in Microsoft being part of an antitrust complaint against Google.  It was only a few days ago that Microsoft was forced to introduce browser choice on Windows machines in Europe as a result of a previous European Union ruling."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/02/23/google-antitrust-european-commission/>