Google on Tuesday said that the European Commission is looking into complaints filed by three companies that contend the US Internet giant is not playing fair.
"Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners," senior competition counsel Julia Holtz said in a blog post late Tuesday.
"This is not the case."
The complaints were made by British price comparison website Foundem, French legal search engine ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing.
Google said it will provide information to the Commission and was confident its operations conform to European competition law.
Foundem and ejustice.fr expressed concerns that their specialized search engines were being intentionally given low rankings in query results, according to Holtz.
"Our algorithms aim to rank first what people are most likely to find useful and we have nothing against vertical search sites," Holtz said.
Ciao! was described as a longtime user of Google's AdSense ad-serving platform that began complaining about the standard terms of the arrangement after the company was bought by rival Microsoft in 2008.
"We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market," Holtz said.
{{/usCountry}}"We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market," Holtz said.
{{/usCountry}}"We believe our business practices reflect those commitments."