BRUSSELS: On Monday, Google was the target of an antitrust lawsuit after a Danish online competitor complained to EU regulators that the Alphabet subsidiary had unfairly favoured its own job search engine.
Three years after first coming under her inspection, EU antitrust watchdog Margrethe Vestager’s investigation of the programme, Google for Jobs, may be sped up by the complaint. Since that time, the EU has not taken any particular action in the online job-search industry.
Requests for comment made outside of business hours were not immediately answered by Google or the European Commission.
Vestager recently penalised Google more than 8 billion euros ($8.4 billion) for a number of anti-competitive actions, and the company has previously claimed that this prompted it to make improvements in Europe.
23 online job-search websites criticised Google for Jobs in 2019 after it was introduced in Europe. They said that as a result of the online search giant allegedly using its market dominance to promote its new service, they had lost market share.
Although candidates must travel elsewhere to apply, Google’s service links to postings that have been collected from numerous employers, allowing candidates to sort, save, and receive alerts about jobs. For standard web searches, Google displays a sizable widget for the tool at the top of the results.
