London: Google Inc , operator of the world’s largest search engine, was sued in London by a UK Internet company for promoting its own maps over those of competitors in what it claimed was Google’s cynical manipulation of search results.

Streetmap, a provider of Internet maps, filed a complaint in London 15 March, according to court records. Google’s actions have made its products harder to find, the UK-based company alleged on Wednesday in a statement. It’s at least the second such lawsuit filed against Google since June.

Streetmap said its complaint mirrors a three-year-old antitrust probe by the European Union into whether Google favors its own services over competitors in search results.

The European commission has asked Mountain View, California-based Google to submit proposals that could lead to a settlement. Meanwhile, EU privacy probes of the company are accelerating.

We have had to take this action in an effort to protect our business and attract attention to those that, like us, have started their own technology businesses, only to find them damaged by Google’s cynical manipulation of search results, Kate Sutton, commercial director of Streetmap, said in the statement.

Tom Price, a spokesman for Google, declined to comment today on the allegations, saying in an e-mailed statement that he hadn’t seen the complaint.

Foundem suit

In June, Google was sued in London by a UK Internet company that previously filed a complaint with EU regulators, sparking the antitrust probe.

Foundem, a UK shopping comparison website, sought damages for revenue lost as a result of Google’s anti-competitive conduct, lawyers for Foundem said in court documents.

Foundem said in the lawsuit that it had been unfairly penalized by Google because it offers a competing shopping comparison search service. It lost web traffic as a result of being pushed down in Google’s search rankings.

Price, the Google spokesman, declined to comment on the suit when it was made public in January.

EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia has sought a deal with Google to end the antitrust probe without imposing fines, while competitors such as Microsoft Corp. and TripAdvisor Inc. have tried to pressure regulators to force Google to change its business practices.

The US government ended an investigation into Google in January, saying there was no evidence the company’s actions harmed consumers.

Al Verney, a Brussels-based spokesman for Google, said last month in an e-mailed statement that the company is working with the European commission.

EU probe

The EU in 2010 began investigating claims Google discriminated against other services in its search results and stopped some websites from accepting competitors’ ads after receiving complaints from Microsoft and others.

While Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft and partner Yahoo! Inc. have about a quarter of the US Web-search market, Google has almost 95% of the traffic in Europe, Microsoft said in a blog post in 2011, citing data from regulators.

Internet traffic can be diverted by manipulating the order of search results, said Susan Athey, a professor of economics at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a Microsoft consultant, in a blog post on Microsoft’s website last month.

When a site is moved from the first position to the 10th position in a series of search results, it typically will lose about 85% of its traffic, she said.

Impartiality of search results will become all the more important in the years to come, given that screen sizes on smartphones and tablets are smaller than on traditional PCs, Athey said.

Smaller screens mean there is even less room for competing services to appear in Google’s mobile search, she said.

Privacy front

Google faces possible fines on another front in Europe, after six European Union data protection regulators started coordinated enforcement measures over the company’s failure to fix flaws in a new privacy policy.

A joint decision 2 April followed a deadlock at a 19 March meeting between Google and the data watchdogs, France’s national commission for computing and civil liberties said in a statement on its website. It’s now up to national regulators to pursue the company according to their own rules and powers, CNIL said.

Privacy investigations

Google faces privacy investigations by authorities around the world as it debuts new services and steps up competition with Facebook Inc. for users and advertisers.

Google last year changed its system to create a uniform set of policies for more than 60 products, unleashing criticism from regulators and consumer advocates concerned it isn’t protecting data it collects.

Our privacy policy respects European law, Verney, the spokesman for Google, has said. We have engaged fully with the data protection authorities involved throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward.

The UK’s privacy watchdog said in a separate statement it started an investigation into whether Google’s revised March 2012 privacy policy is compliant with the Data Protection Act.

The case is Streetmap.eu Ltd. v. Google Inc., case no 13- 1013, High Court of Justice, Chancery Division. Bloomberg

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