News Corp has expanded its complaint against Google to EU antitrust regulators investigating whether the Internet search engine abused its dominance, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.
News Corp, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the owner of the Wall Street Journal and publisher HarperCollins, took its grievance to the European Commission two years ago.
It said Google’s practice of aggregating content on its home page and exploiting its dominance in online advertising undermines the business model of content providers such as News Corp.
“News Corp has broadened its existing complaint,” the person said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The source said the new elements included Google’s practice of copying or scraping content from other sites and also promoting its own news search results above rival sites.
The move by News Corp came a month after its CEO Robert Thomson met European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager to talk about Google.
Source: REUTERS
