Google has faced an antitrust complaint from a Danish rival in the job search industry

Author: Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google faced an antitrust complaint on Monday from Denmark’s online job search rival Jobindex, which told European Union regulators that the Alphabet-owned company allegedly unfairly favored its own job search service.

The complaint may revive the control of the Google for Jobs service by the head of the EU antitrust office, Margrethe Vestager. Three years ago, Vestager said she was investigating the issue but had not yet taken any action.

The European Commission said it would consider the complaint in accordance with standard procedures. The Jobindex action comes four years after German media group Axel Springer’s Stepstone job portal filed a similar complaint against Google.

Google, which has fined Vestager more than 8 billion euros ($8.4 billion) in recent years for various anti-competitive practices, says it works with employment agencies to direct people to sites with job opportunities suitable for them.

“Any job provider, large or small, can participate in the program, and this feature helps businesses see more traffic and job searches,” a Google spokesperson said.

Google for Jobs, launched in Europe in 2018, faced criticism from 23 online job sites in 2019. The sites said they lost market share after the online search giant allegedly used its market power to promoting your new service.

Big tech companies are using their market dominance to promote their own products, gaining an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals and sparking antitrust complaints.

Google’s service connects to job postings from multiple employers, allowing candidates to filter, save and receive job alerts, although they must go elsewhere to apply. Google places a large tool widget at the top of regular web search results.

GRAZING THE MARKET

Jobindex, one of 23 critics three years ago, said Google had distorted the highly competitive Danish market through anti-competitive measures.

Founder and CEO Kaare Danielsen said that until Google for Jobs entered the local market last year, Jobindex had created the largest database of job offers in Denmark.

“Nevertheless, shortly after the launch of Google for Jobs in Denmark, Jobindex lost 20% of its search traffic to an inferior Google service,” Danielsen told Reuters.

“By placing its own, inferior service at the top of search results pages, Google is effectively hiding some of the most relevant job opportunities from job seekers. In turn, recruiters may no longer reach all job seekers unless they use Google’s job board,” he said.

“This not only stifles competition between recruitment services, but directly harms labor markets, which are crucial to any economy,” Danielsen said.

He urged the Commission to order Google to end its alleged anti-competitive practices, fine the company and impose periodic payments to ensure compliance.

‘FREE RIDE’

Jobindex said it had seen examples of recklessness where some of its job postings were copied without its consent and distributed via Google for Jobs on behalf of Jobindex business partners. She also mentioned threats to the privacy of job applicants and her clients.

The Jobindex complaint may gain traction among other entities, as did British price comparison site Foundem, whose complaint against Google prompted dozens of competitors to come forward and led to a decade-long investigation that resulted in a hefty fine for Google.

Google has been sued several times for a variety of reasons, from persuading mobile phone makers to favor its own apps to distorting Internet search results to favor shopping services.

In February, Swedish price comparison site PriceRunner sued Google for around €2.1 billion, maintaining that nothing had changed even after Google was fined €2.42 billion in 2017 for favoring its own price comparison site.

($1 = 0.9475 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by Mark Potter and Bernadette Baum)