After nearly five years of investigation – and a supposed settlement – EU regulators on Wednesday finally slapped Google with antitrust charges for skewing Internet search results in favor of its own ads.
The European Commission also said it will investigate whether the tech giant entered into anticompetitive agreements or abused its dominant market position with its Android operating system.
The charges come more than a year after the commission announced it had settled complaints that Google promoted its Google Shopping ads more prominently than rival comparison shopping services in general Internet searches.
Specifically, the EU’s regulatory body alleged that Google’s practices made it too difficult for upstarts to get into the online-advertising business by blocking advertisers from switching to other search engines and forcing website publishers to obtain the majority of their online search advertisements from Google.
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