Google may be a US company but when you’re a tech giant with stakes in pretty much every relevant industry that exists, you’re bound to geographically expand your operations as your portfolio diversifies. Today, Google is present in over 40 countries around the world and deals in everything from Internet services and cloud computing to self-driving cars and the Android operating system. Well, with great market share comes great responsibility and that’s exactly what recently landed Google in trouble with the European Union. More specifically, the European Commission has charged the Mountain View-based tech giant for not one, but three alleged breaches of its antitrust laws.
Simply speaking, the Commission claims that Google acted in a manner which created an uneven playing field for its competitors as the company allegedly used some of its enormously popular products and services in order to promote its less popular products and services at the expense of the rest of the market. Google is currently figuring out a way to defend its practices related to the Android operating system, AdWords, and AdSense.
Well, there has just been an update in regards to the latter case. The European Commission extended Google’s deadline to respond to anti-competition accusations related to its advertisement placement service. While the US tech giant originally had to respond to charges on Wednesday, October 26th, that deadline has now been moved to Thursday, November 3rd. As the Commission’s spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso explained earlier today, Google asked for more time to review the case file documents and was granted that time in accordance with standard practice. Cardoso specifically pointed out that EU wants Google to completely exercise its right of defense. In other words, the Commission seems rather certain that it has a bulletproof case against the Mountain View-based Internet company.
The charges in question were filed in July after Commission concluded there’s enough evidence to prove that Google used the popularity of its AdSense for Search in order to promote its own shopping service at the expense of competition. Given the fact that this is only a second deadline extension granted for this case, it could be the case that another one will follow come November.