European Publishers, Others Slam Google on “Abusive” Practices, Ask EC to Reject Google Proposal

It looks like it may be back to the drawing board for Google on the European competitive front: hundreds of publishers and publishing trade associations today are coming out in force to ask the European Commission and its Vice President Joaquín Almunia to “reject outright” Google’s draft remedies, which Google suggested to rebalance competition in search and other online products where it is dominant in the region. The move, by the European Publishers’ Council, comes on the same day that other would-be Google competitors, including online mapping and travel companies, as well as the Fairsearch consortium, are also expected to call for much deeper scrutiny of Google and rejection of its proposals.

Google originally published its draft remedies on April 25, which included suggestions for how it would offer competitors some concessions such as labelling Google’s own links more clearly (a more detailed list of the remedies Google proposed is below). Google competitors were already stirring with negative responses early on, but Almunia, who oversees antitrust and other competition issues, gave them had until June 27 to respond formally. What’s coming out today appears to be a concerted effort to coordinate those negative reponses — claiming Google’s suggestions do not go far enough — for maximum effect.

We will be listening into the Fairsearch-led press conference later today and will update the post with more as we learn it.

The EPC includes big names like the FT, News International, Guardian Media Group, Axel Springer, Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier, but also more regional players. Among those coming out against Google, for example, is Dr. Hubert Burda, president of the German magazine publishers’ association VDZ. He echoes the basic line that Google needs to go back to the drawing board.

“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,” he said in a statement. “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.”

As we reported before, here are the proposals as Google has made them to date:

• label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that users can distinguish them from natural web search results,
• clearly separate these promoted links from other web search results by clear graphical features (such as a frame), and
• display links to three rival specialised search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users;
• offer all websites the option to opt-out from the use of all their content in Google’s specialised search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly affect the ranking of those web sites in Google’s general web search results,
• offer all specialised search web sites that focus on product search or local search the option to mark certain categories of information in such a way that such information is not indexed or used by Google,
• provide newspaper publishers with a mechanism allowing them to control on a web page per web page basis the display of their content in Google News,
• no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google, and
• no longer impose obligations that would prevent advertisers from managing search advertising campaigns across competing advertising platforms.

It looks like the approach that competitors are taking is to take each of these suggestions, line by line, and show how they are not feasible. For example, on the suggestion on opting out from specialized searches (number three in the list below), the publishers’ group responds: “In other words, ‘if you don’t want us to steal your content, you need to make sure we can’t find it.’ An opt out from a 90% dominant player means of course that you become invisible to readers and is no option at all.”

We are reaching out to all the parties, including Google, for further comment.