Google Investigated

The European Union is investigating Google for abusing its dominant market position in online searches. Three European companies have complained about Google's competitive practices.

The three companies that lodged complaints in February are U.K.-based price comparison site Foundem, French legal search engine ejustice.fr and shopping site Ciao, owned by Microsoft through its own search engine Bing - which has struggled to wrestle online market share away from Google.

The investigation does not imply any wrongdoing by Google, which controls about 90 percent of the online search market in Europe, but shows that the antitrust watchdog is taking the complaints seriously enough to launch a detailed examination of the company's practices.

The EU previously levied fines on Microsoft ($2 billion) and Intel ($1.4 billion) and Google is potentially liable for a fine of 10% percent of its revenue ($2.4 billion based on 2009 data).