A French search engine will today file a complaint against Google, accusing it of abusing its dominant market position and echoing complaints made by three websites last year.
The European Commission said it had yet to receive the complaint.
In a letter to the Commission, French search engine 1plusV accuses Google of bundling its customised search engine (CSE) to its advertising operation, AdSense.
"You can only get access to CSE if you use Adsense for search," alleged Jacques Lafitte, a consultant representing the French company.
1plusV claims other search engines simply cannot grow if Google continues to bundle its services.
Google issued a statement today (22 February) saying it would address any potential concerns because "we believe there is always room for improvement".
The complaint echoes a competition case that was filed against the giant in February 2010. Three websites, Ciao, eJustice.fr and Foundem, filed a similar complaint alleging that Google's search algorithm demoted their sites in Web search results because they were rivals.
Google denied these allegations and in May 2010 it issued a release on its policy blog portal saying users could pair Adsense for search with their own homegrown search results.
However, 1plusV argues that the bundling of Adsense and CSE has not stopped and that it has a contract to prove it.
Google is already at the centre of a much larger antitrust investigation at the European Commission, which was launched in November 2010.
"The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services," the EU executive said in a statement on 30 November.
The Commission is not only investigating whether Google's search algorithms unfairly discriminate against other websites but also whether Google sets exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, which is at the heart of 1plusV's complaint.
In an earlier statement, EU Competition Commission Joaquin Almunia said: "The work is at an early stage, but given the importance of search to a competitive online marketplace, I am looking at the allegations very carefully."
