The engine would have eventually abandoned this clause

The competition authority made this Tuesday the findings of the sector inquiry on the online advertising market. For it, Google is in a dominant position on advertising related to the research. Not only the Internet giant concentrate 90 of research on a France engine, but it would also have 90 of market share in commercial ties. For the wise men of the street of the scale, the "search" is a market in itself, the mechanisms are not fully substitutable for other sectors of the online, such as the "display" advertising (banners, video advertising, etc.) According to the authority, the rate of margin of Google on commercial ties, which would be about 35, indicate that there is no competitive pressure on the sector. And the prices charged on the sponsored links from Google would "between 1.5 and 4 times higher than those observed in Yahoo!" contrary to the arguments by the American giant, Google's position would not be threatened, in the short term by Facebook and the emergence of social networks.

Main mechanism provided in question: the "quality score" introduced by Google in the auction. "Google has some means to influence prices," said the opinion of the authority. This quality score allows the engine to place above in the results an advertiser generating more clicks but having paid less a keyword. For Google, it is to maximize the rate of clicks, but also the service provided to the user.

Need to control step

The market power of the engine would be as shown in its contractual relations with its partners, as "the possibility of close so final and not limited in time an advertiser account", "the possibility of maintaining dysfunctions internally in communication with its customers advertisers" or the "possibility to threaten to close an account. And the authority of the case of NavX, a movement whose account software publisher had been closed because Google saw that it was contrary to its policy of use. Entered in February, it had requested Google to clarify its operation, before condemning the engine on the merits. The American firm had, following this decision, amended its regulations. Finally, during the investigation, a clause has leap the authority. In a contract with the library of Lyon, Google would have applied a 25-year exclusivity clause. The engine would have eventually abandoned this clause.

Google News is also in the viewfinder. Accused of parasitizing the sites that do this, the Google news service should, according to the authority, allow the dereference of accused wishing que presse that press service accusé de parasiter les sites que cela, le service d' actualité de Google devrait, selon l' Autorité, pouvoir autoriser le déréférencement des Accusé qui le souhaitent que presse service A measure already applied in Italy and may be declined by France.

However, the notice requests not regulation of the sector, which could "curb innovation", but targeted measures to ensure a "non-discriminatory treatment of actors". For example, it calls for an extension to the Internet of the FIR Act on relations between authorities and advertisers.

Forced transparency

Google could be obligated to make public the sharing of revenues on its AdSense service. Depending on the circumstances, the competition authority will wait so the inquiry of the Commission on the subject, or any references. But a self-referral testifies would not news for the moment. The elders also expect Google to modify certain points of its operation after this notice. The search engine was not ready to make...

Google indeed disputed the analysis of the authority and relevance of the chosen market contours. "Sponsored links are one of the many options have advertisers to advertise." If the price of the sponsored links increases, advertisers can move into other formats, online or not, and they do not hesitate to do so. "This is good evidence that the sector is dynamic and competitive," explained the engine in a release.