Google hit with antitrust complaint after Danish rival takes grievance

BRUSSELS Reuters -- Google was hit with an antitrust complaint on Monday after a Danish online job-search rival took its grievance to EU regulators, alleging that the Alphabet unit favoured its own job search service.

The complaint could lead to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's scrutiny of Google for Jobs three years after it came under her microscope. Since then, the EU hasn't taken any action relating to the online job-search sector.

The European Commission and Google did not respond to requests for comment out of office hours.

In recent years, Google, which has been fined over 8 billion euros $8.4 billion for various anti-competitive practices, has previously made changes in Europe after complaints from online job-search rivals.

In Europe in 2018, Google for Jobs sparked criticism from 23 online job-search websites in 2019. They said they had lost market share after the online search giant used its market power to push its new service.

Google has a link to postings from many employers, allowing candidates to filter, save and get alerts on openings, even though they must go elsewhere to apply. Google places a large widget at the top of results for ordinary web searches.

Three years ago, one of the 23 critics said Google had skewed what had been a highly competitive Danish market towards itself via anticompetitive means.

In Denmark, Jobindex founder and CEO Kaare Danielsen said that his company had built up the largest jobs database by the time Google for Jobs entered the local market last year.

In the short time following the introduction of Google for Jobs in Denmark, Jobindex lost 20% of its search traffic to Google's inferior service, Danielsen told Reuters.

Google hides some of the most relevant job offerings from job seekers by putting its own inferior service at the top of results pages. He said that if they use Google's job service, they may not reach all job seekers.

Danielsen said that this does not just stifle competition amongst recruitment services, but directly impairs labour markets, which are central to any economy, and that the Commission should order Google to stop its anti-competitive practices and impose periodic payments to ensure compliance.

Job index had seen examples of free-riding, with some of its own job ads copied without its permission and marketed through Google for Jobs on behalf of Jobindex's business partners. Privacy risks are also cited by job applicants and their clients.