Researchers call out Google for skewing search results in its own favor amid European Union antitrust probe

WASHINGTON – Researchers from Columbia Law School and Harvard Business School wrote in a new paper that Internet search giant Google skews search results in its own favor.

“While Google is known primarily as a search engine,” the study reads, “it has increasingly developed and promoted its own content as an alternative to results from other websites. By prominently displaying Google content in response to search queries, Google is able to leverage its dominance in search to gain customers for its content.”

The study finds users are 45% more likely to click on local search results if they are “organically determined” — which means that they do not prioritize Google’s services.

These findings potentially add more ammunition to the European antitrust case against the Internet juggernaut. That case, which has been led by European Union Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, alleges, among other things, that Google requires or incentivizes manufacturers to preinstall its search engine, apps and other services and excludes rival products.

The antitrust probe also alleges that Google unfairly insists its services are bundled, meaning some cannot be preinstalled without including the others. The complaint further states that the firm is hindering manufacturers from developing alternative versions of Android, which is open source. These are commonly known as “forks,” with Amazon’s Fire OS and Xiaomi’s Mi being two examples. If Google is found to be at fault for any of these allegations it potentially faces a $6 billion fine.

Google, for its part, has remained defiant in the face of this study and the antitrust case. Google reps point out that in conducting their study, the authors were assisted by Yelp, a Google competitor, to the point that the Yelp Data Science Team is credited with co-authoring the study.

“This isn’t new – Yelp’s been making these arguments to regulators, and demanding higher placement in search results, for the past five years,” a Google representative said in a statement. “This latest study is based on a flawed methodology that focuses on results for just a handful of cherry-picked queries. At Google we focus on trying to provide the best results for our users.”

Amit Singhal, SVP of Google Search, wrote on the company blog in response to the EU case: “While Google may be the most used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways – and allegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide of the mark.”