BRUSSELS (Reuters) – On Monday, an online job-search competitor from Denmark took its complaint to EU regulators, saying that Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google had unfairly favoured its own job-search service.
The complaint could speed up EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s review of the Google for Jobs service, which she has been looking at for three years. Since then, the EU hasn’t done anything in particular about the online job–search market.
Requests for comment sent outside of office hours were not answered right away by the European Commission or Google.
Vestager has fined Google more than 8 billion euros ($8.4 billion) over the past few years for doing things that hurt competition. Google has said in the past that it made changes in Europe after competitors in the online job-search market complained.
When Google for Jobs came out in Europe in 2018, 23 online job-search sites were not happy with it. They said that the online search giant had used its market power to promote its new service, which caused them to lose market share.
Google’s service has links to job postings from many different companies. Applicants can sort, save, and get alerts about openings, but they have to go somewhere else to apply. Google puts a big widget for the tool at the top of the normal search results page.
One of the 23 critics, Jobindex, said three years ago that Google had used anti-competitive methods to turn what had been a very competitive Danish market toward itself.
Kaare Danielsen, the founder and CEO of Jobindex, said that by the time Google for Jobs came to Denmark last year, his company had already built up the largest jobs database there.
“However, in the short time after Google for Jobs was introduced in Denmark, Jobindex lost 20% of its search traffic to Google’s less good service, “Danielsen told Reuters.”
“By putting its own worse service at the top of results pages, Google hides some of the best job opportunities from people who are looking for work. Recruiters, on the other hand, might not be able to reach all job seekers anymore unless they use Google’s job service, “he said.
“This doesn’t just hurt competition among recruitment services; it also hurts labour markets, which are the heart of any economy,” Danielsen said, urging the Commission to order Google to stop the alleged anti-competitive practises, fine the company, and make the company make regular payments to ensure compliance.
Jobindex said it had seen examples of free-riding, like when some of its own job ads were copied without its permission and marketed through Google for Jobs on behalf of Jobindex’s business partners. It also said that there were risks to applicants’ and clients’ privacy.
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