Google’s European antitrust troubles have reared their head again, with reports from several sources suggesting the European Union is about to accuse the search engine giant of violations.

After years of painfully slow investigations, The Competition Office at the European Commission, which is charged with ensuring fair trade practices within the EU, is about to level formal charges against Google, accusiring it of abusing its dominance of Internet search.

The Financial Times reported that Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, is to serve Google with a formal “statement of objections” which lists the complaints made against it by a number of competitors in Europe. Once that’s been served, Google will then be given a chance to respond to the allegations, after which the regulators can either press ahead, revise their arguments, or reach a settlement with the company.

Sources say the main bone of contention is the way in which Google allegedly ‘promotes’ its own services – such as its shopping and travel services – over its competitors. But that’s not the only problem, because Vestager is also expected to launch an investigation into Google’s Android operating system as well

It should be noted that unlike in the U.S., where it faces stronger competition from Bing and Yahoo!, Google holds an overwhelmingly dominant position in Europe’s search market. For example, it holds an 88.87 percent share of the U.K’s search market, according to the most recent data from Statista.com.

This isn’t the first time Google has been bridled with regulatory problems. It previously faced scrutiny in the U.S., before reaching a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after that body found “evidence does not support a claim” … that Google practiced “search bias.”

Google is obviously hopeful that it’ll prevail in the EU as well. In a leaked internal memo to employees, the company said the EU’s move was “very disappointing news,” but insisted it had strong counter arguments to the charges levelled against it. For example in search, Google insisted its “competition is just one click away – and it’s growing”. It also said its Travel and Shopping services had lots of highly ranked competitors, including Amazon and TripAdvisor.

Vestager’s decision to take action against Google comes after more than five years of investigation and settlement negotiations that were instigated by her predecessor, Joaquin Almunia. The EU has previously negotiated three seperate settlements with Google, but each was criticized for being too lenient on the company.

Should EU regulators ultimately find against Google, the company could be subject to fines as large as $6.4 billion (about ten percent of its annual revenue), although such an outcome is still probably years away.

Image credit: geralt via Pixabay.com