Google faces an antitrust complaint on Monday by Danish online job-search rival Jobindex, whichtold European Union regulators the Alphabet-owned business had allegedly unfairly favoured its own job-search service.
The complaint could reinvigorate EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s scrutiny of the service, Google for Jobs. Three years ago, Vestager said she was looking into the issue but she has yet to take any action.
The European Commission said it would assess the complaint according to the standard procedures. Jobindex’s action comes four years after German media group Axel Springer’s jobs portal Stepstone filed a similar complaint against Google.
Google, which has been fined more than 8 billion euros ($8.4 billion) by Vestager in recent years for various anti-competitive practices, says it partners with job providers to direct people to websites with job listings relevant to them.
“Any jobs provider, big or small, is able to take part and companies are seeing increased traffic and job matches as a result of this feature,” a Google spokesperson said.
Launched in Europe in 2018, Google for Jobs triggered criticism from 23 online job-search websites in 2019. They said they had lost market share after the online search giant had allegedly used its market power to push its new service.
Big technology companies use their market dominance to push their own products, getting an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals and spurring antitrust complaints.
Google’s service links to postings aggregated from many employers, allowing candidates to filter, save and get alerts about openings, though they must go elsewhere to apply. Google places a large widget for the tool at the top of results for ordinary web searches.
