Ref. Ares(2018)2573460 - 17/05/2018
Ref. Ares(2018)2751838 - 28/05/2018
FairSearch is a group of multinational businesses and organisations who lobby against the
dominance of Google and certain Google business practices.
Established in October 2010, FairSearch was formed by travel sites, swiftly followed by
Microsoft in December that same year. According to Nicolas Petit, a professor of
competition law at the University of Liège, FairSearch is "seen by many observers as a
Microsoft trojan horse"1. Now FairSearch Europe is a group of 12 European and US-parented
companies active across the various search sectors, including travel, mobile phone
manufacturers, software companies, search providers and online commerce: Nokia,
France’s Twenga, Poland’s Allegro, UK price comparison site Foundem, Brazil’s BusCapé
and US companies Expedia, TripAdvisor, Oracle, Microsoft, admarketplace.com, the Find
and the Travel Tech Association.
FairSearch focuses at lobbying and complaining against Google (on their website no other
activities appear), under the pretext of promoting “
economic growth, innovation and choice
across the Internet ecosystem by fostering and defending competition in online and mobile
search.
We believe in enforcement of existing laws to prevent anticompetitive behaviour that
harms consumers.”
In this context they had frequent meetings with Cabinets and Commission services.
FairSearch believes in two essential principles:
TRANSPARENCY: Consumers – not search engines – should choose winners in the
marketplace. Consumers benefit from more choices in the search marketplace competing
to win users, innovating to improve products and displaying results transparently. When
search providers engage in search discrimination – manipulating search results to promote a
favoured product and demote competitors – consumers pay the price.
INNOVATION: Consumers benefit when competition in the marketplace forces companies
to continue to innovate and develop the best solutions for online search. No one company
should be allowed to use its dominance to foreclose competitors from the search
marketplace – particularly in high-traffic specialty segments, like travel, jobs, health, real
estate, media and local search.
It finds both those principles violated by Google.
FairSearch is looking forward to cooperating with the Commission on the DSM.
As to the regulation of platforms and the data platforms collect, they are reluctant and find
the issue very complex, risking to impede their capacity to keep up with the rapid pace of
digital change and possibly undermining their global competitiveness.
“Existing competition law, properly enforced, provides companies room to innovate in a
competitive environment, and that any additional regulation would need to be developed
very carefully to ensure that it does not constrain the digital sector’s ability to evolve to
meet the fresh challenges of the next digital revolution.”
1 http://www.computerworld.com/article/2496436/technology-law-regulation/microsoft-not-fooling-anyone-by-
using-fairsearch-front-in-antitrust-compla.html