Thursday, February 25, 2010

FT.com / Technology - Formulas at heart of Google complaint

More on the Google antitrust complaints with the European Commission; see the full article for more details

The secretive nature of the algorithm is at the heart of the antitrust complaints the company faces in Brussels. Companies find it hard to understand why their rankings go up and down, and Google stands accused of manipulating the formula to discriminate against competitors.

The complaints from the Foundem, ejustice.fr and Ciao websites, fall into two parts. One is to do with Google’s ranking system, with the three sites claiming they were penalised for being niche search services, competing with Google’s own search offerings. Google said the sites were ranked low because its algorithm is designed to weed out sites that are not useful for internet users.

FT.com / Technology - Formulas at heart of Google complaint

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