European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Margrethe Vestager vs Google (round 3) Doubts grow over whether Vestager’s latest assault is a bold strike or a sign of weakness.

Europe’s competition czar Margrethe Vestager has fired off another salvo in her antitrust battle with Google.

On Thursday she hit the internet titan with a third set of charges, this time targeting its advertising business. The European Commission also issued fresh accusations against Google Shopping, bolstering its 2015 case against the firm's search engine.

That leaves Google battling antitrust complaints on three fronts: search, mobile and advertising.

But the speed of the investigation — Europe's top antitrust regulator is still pursuing conduct dating back a decade — has led many to wonder if Vestager is hitting Google hard, or struggling to produce results.

If the Commission "does not act conclusively in the near future, there may be little competition left to protect," said Shivaun Raff, co-founder of Foundem, a shopping comparison website, which filed a complaint against Google in 2009.

The latest round of accusations spotlights the limits of antitrust enforcers to strike against fleet-footed internet giants.

“The Commission should not just open new investigations but also follow through the pending ones,” said Markus Ferber, a center-right member of the European Parliament from Germany.

Google is not only the second most valuable company in the U.S., but also sells the No. 1 mobile operating system in the world, handles about 90 percent of internet searches in Europe and, along with Facebook, is the pre-eminent player in online advertising. Alphabet, Google's parent company, turned over $20 billion in the first quarter of 2016.



Two years into the job, Vestager is under intense pressure from national capitals and Google rivals to get results. Her probes threaten hefty fines, and could undermine Google’s push into areas such as e-commerce or mobile communications. She has repeatedly refused to provide a timeline for the cases.

"Quality sometimes comes at the cost of speed, but that is our duty," she told reporters Thursday, saying it was unfortunate the previous Commission had embarked on years of failed settlement talks.

Shopping: Is what you see what you asked for?

Google said its services had “increased choice for European consumers and promote competition." Vestager counters that the fresh charges show Google systematically placed its own shopping service at the top of searches, regardless of whether it was most relevant to users' queries.

"We believe that Google’s actions have harmed consumers, who get the results that Google wants them to see, not necessarily the ones that are most relevant," she said.

Google responded last August to charges from April 2015, arguing its shopping service competed with websites like Amazon and eBay. Vestager was undeterred. She said the new set of charges this week showed the two e-commerce giants were not close competitors of Google.

"The time taken by the Commission to produce its supplementary statement of objections shows that the Commission is thorough, but that its case has important weaknesses," said James Waterworth, who heads up the Brussels office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, of which Google is a member.

Google ads: The fine print

The charges against Google's advertising business accuse it of imposing terms and conditions that hobble rivals.

The advertising business in question, AdSense for search, places adverts alongside search results generated by Google’s search engine on customers’ websites. These include online retailers, telecoms operators and newspapers. The service’s terms and conditions restrict their ability to take advertisements from rival ad servers, the Commission said.

Certain contract clauses gave Google the right to approve ads appearing alongside its own ads. Websites also promised to save premium space for ads placed and monetized by Google.

"Too many websites are dependent on Google ads for traffic, revenue or both. Google ads and technology are in many places consumers do not realize," said Michael Weber, chairman of ICOMP, an association of organizations involved in internet commerce, which has filed a complaint against Google.



Some of the advertising contracts date back to 2006, and Vestager noted Google has since given its website customers more flexibility.

To some the time-lag between the original events and Thursday's charges is hard to justify.

“After a seven-year investigation, any final decision may simply come too late to have any effect in this dynamic economy,” said Thomas Höppner, a Berlin-based lawyer at Hausfeld, who represents a number of German publishers, including Axel Springer, a co-owner of POLITICO Europe.

A number of complainants have fallen on hard times since the Commission first opened proceedings in 2010. Comparison sites Ciao and Kelkoo both saw traffic drop by more than 65 percent between 2007 and 2014, according to comScore, and were sold off by Microsoft and Yahoo, respectively.

Such delays are “unacceptable,” said Léonidas Kalogeropoulos, who heads up the Open Internet Project, another group of complainants, including French search engine Qwant. He repeated calls for the Commission to force Google to change its behavior, even before adopting a final decision.

Vestager retorted that her officials were focused on concluding the case, not on developing stop-gap remedies. The probes were complex and data-intensive, she said, and pointed to past cases against Intel and Microsoft as examples of how the Commission was able to bolster initial accusations.

Yet Google is in a worse position, argued Jacques Lafitte, a consultant with Avisa who represents a complainant against Google.

"This is the first time in history that the European Union has three sets of charges against a single company."

