The word juggernaut still does an excellent job of encompassing Google’s capability in the information and search markets. They have been a powerful force in the Internet industry and for all appearances will continue to be into the future. As a result, every year someone somewhere takes umbrage at their size and momentum and an antitrust probe is filed against them.

According to the AP, this time the European Commission has aimed at their search advertising and results.

The European Commission’s move, announced Tuesday, is the first formal investigation by a major regulatory agency into whether Google has been manipulating its search engine to stifle competition and funnel more traffic to its own services. It could potentially result in billions in fines, as in the recent cases of Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp.

Several competitors, one owned by Microsoft, say that links to their services appear too low on Google’s general search results. They also claim that when Google offers similar services, such as online price comparison, it puts its own links higher on the sponsored search results, the ones companies have to pay for.

When it comes to Internet search, Google has the dominant hand. They certainly have more reach than everyone else and when they flex their muscles, the industry trembles. This gives everyone pause. They’re in the perfect position to posture and abuse their supremacy and that should put them in the crosshairs as often as possible—else the company whose motto is “Don’t be evil,” could end up breaking their stride.

Still, Google’s reply to the AP reporter about the probe shows that some of the charges against them appear to be somewhat flimsy. One of the complainants, the U.K.-based price comparison site Foundem, would likely be suffering lower ranked results because they have a significant amount of duplicated content. Any first-year SEO amateur will tell people that duplicating content (especially a significant amount) will distinctly injure Google rankings and it’s been that way since almost day one. If most of the complaints are like this, they probably won’t find much traction.

The Commission also states that it will look into if Google made it difficult for Google’s competitors to post ads on its sites and if Google made it more difficult for customers to transfer data from Google to other advertisers. Amusingly, these are two things that the search giant already constantly toots their own horns about—it’s not inconsistent to see Bing advertisements on searches done on Google, and they seem to pride themselves in giving ads to anyone who doesn’t violate their Terms of Service. Furthermore, Google just got into a spat with Facebook over customer data portability (guess who’s on the side of portability?).