According to Reuters, Google has been accused by Brazilian antitrust watchdog Cade of unfairly using rivals’ content, discouraging their advertisers and favoring its own product listings. Brazil’s Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo has already suggested that tech companies are not paying enough taxes. This regulatory pressure came after Brazilian authorities took a closer look at major US Internet companies (Google, Facebook etc.) after revelations that the US spied on digital communications by President Dilma Rousseff and state run oil company Petrobras. Brazilian shopping sites Buscape and Bondfardo accused Google of scraping (reproduction of product reviews from their users) and that the company gives unfair prominence to Google Shopping on its general web search, making it only price-comparison tool that appears with photos, prices and evaluations.
Also Microsoft filed a complaint agaist Google, charginh it with obstruction of advertising campaigns to give unfair advantage to its very profitable AdWords service.
But these are not the first antitrust charges for Google. The company has still not settle 3 year antitrust dispute with the EU on grounds similar to those raised by Brazilian investigation.
Via: reuters