Google rejects ‘unfounded’ EU antitrust charges of market abuse

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine, rejected on Thursday European Union antitrust charges that it abused its market power, saying they lacked any economic or legal basis. “Economic data spanning more than a decade, an array of documents and statements from complainants all confirm that product search is robustly competitive,” Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, wrote in a blog

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Google refuses French order to apply ‘right to be forgotten’ globally

(This version of the July 30th corrects story to read “partly” of a political nature, not “mostly” in paragraph 10) By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google Inc is refusing to bow to an order from the French privacy watchdog to scrub search results worldwide when users invoke their “right to be forgotten” online, it said on Thursday, exposing itself to possible fines. The French data protection authority, the CNIL, in June ordered the search engine group to de-list on request search results appearing under a person's name from all its websites, including Google.com. Google complied with the ruling and has since received more than a quarter of a million removal requests, according to its transparency report

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LinkedIn’s revenue beat fails to connect with investors

LinkedIn's shares were down 3.9 percent in after-hours trading, however, as investors focused on the company's widening losses and an underwhelming full-year revenue forecast. LinkedIn has been spending heavily to acquire businesses and build up its sales and development teams in an effort to leverage off its 380 million members.

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EU says Google hurt consumers and competitors in Internet search case

The European Union accused Google Inc on Wednesday of cheating consumers and competitors by distorting Web search results to favor its own shopping service, after a five-year investigation that could change the rules for business online. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google, which dominates Internet search engine markets worldwide, had been sent a Statement of Objections – effectively a charge sheet – to which it has 10 weeks to respond.

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Confidential FTC report found Google anticompetitive tactics: WSJ

Key staff members at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission were in favor of suing Google Inc for violating antitrust rules before the agency settled its investigation in 2013, according a confidential report cited by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The report by the staff of the FTC's competition bureau argued that the owner of the world's No

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Google wins dismissal of U.S. lawsuit over Android app limits

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit accusing Google Inc of harming smartphone buyers by forcing handset makers that use its Android operating system to make the search engine company's own applications the default option. Consumers claimed that Google required companies such as Samsung Electronics Co to favor Google apps such as YouTube on Android-powered phones, and restrict rival apps such as Microsoft Corp's Bing. They said this illegally drove smartphone prices higher because rivals could not compete for the “prime screen real estate” that Google's apps enjoyed

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EU official criticizes Google meetings on right to be forgotten ruling

By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A senior EU official criticized a series of public meetings held in Europe by Google on a landmark court ruling on the “right to be forgotten”, saying the meetings were part of lobbying efforts against EU data protection rules. Paul Nemitz, a director in the European Commission’s justice department, made his comments at Google’s Brussels meeting, the last in the series of meetings aimed at helping the world’s most popular Internet search engine implement the judgment

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