Google has always denied the European Union's antitrust charges, but the search firm has finally formalized its response in a 150-page document sent to the EU and condensed into a post on the Google Europe blog.
Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel at Google, says the EU's allegations that Google is illegally abusing its market dominance in anti-competitive practices that favor its own Google Shopping over other e-commerce aggregator websites are "wrong" and "unfounded."
"We believe that the SO's (Statement of Objective) preliminary conclusions are wrong as a matter of fact, law and economics," stated Walker.
"The SO says that Google's displays of paid ads from merchants (and, previously, of specialized groups of organic search results) 'diverted' traffic away from shopping services. But the SO doesn't back up that claim, doesn't counter the significant benefits to consumers and advertisers, and doesn't provide a clear legal theory to connect its claims with its proposed remedy."
Back in April, the EU's Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced that the five-year antitrust investigation into Google's practices in Europe has come to the conclusion that Google harms both its rivals and consumers by placing paid search results from Google Shopping at the top of the search results page whenever a customer searches for a product.
However, Walker argues that the EU has blatantly ignored the fact that Google is not the dominant player in e-commerce and is up against extremely fierce competition from other websites, including Amazon and eBay. Walker also says that, within the last 10 years, its search engine has sent more than 20 billion clicks to other shopping comparison websites in European countries, accounting for a 227 percent increase in traffic on its rivals' websites.
Walker also points out that the continuing changes in the search industry prevent Google from keeping a firm hold over how people search for products they want to buy. Many users, for instance, will bypass Google and head straight to Amazon to search for items they want to buy, thereby lessening Google's influence on what products they see being sold on which websites.
"These kinds of developments reflect a dynamic and competitive industry, where companies are continuing to evolve their business models and online and offline markets are converging," Walker said.
Speaking to Reuters, EU spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso said the EU has received Google's response and will "carefully consider" what the company has to say before proceeding.
If the EU decides that Google is guilty of violating European antitrust laws, Google could be ordered to pay as much as $6.7 billion, or roughly 10 percent of its annual revenue, to ensure total deterrence in the future.
