Study finds Google prioritises own services over rivals

An academic study from Harvard and Columbia universities, funded by Google competitor Yelp - has found that Google discriminates against competitors in its search results.

The study revealed that Google favoured search results that directed users to Google content over results that pointed to competitors such as Yelp and Orbitz, a lead researcher, Tim Wu, propagator of net neutrality, said.

"What the data shows, is in the interest of anti-competitive behaviour, maybe they're hurting consumers along the way,"  latimes.com quoted Wu. "It puts the grist in the mill for an antitrust enforcer."

Though Google did not respond to a request for comment, a spokesperson said in an April blog post that rival businesses appeared to be thriving, writing "people have more choice than ever before."

European investigators have been working since April to determine whether Google distorts search results for its own benefit, to the disadvantage of rivals.

A similar inquiry by the US Federal Trade Commission into possible antitrust violations was dropped in 2013.

According to Yelp, the new report, which it presented to European regulators on Friday, could put pressure on the investigation and encourage additional research.

"We believe these revelations are timely given the active inquiries into these very issues by antitrust authorities," said Luther Lowe, Yelp's vice president of public policy, latimes.com reported.

Meanwhile, earlier, this year, a probe conducted by the US Federal trade Commission involving Google Inc's anti-competitive tactics have been made public.

According to the report by the government agency, the internet company was flouting its own standards for the search results page and putting its own businesses on top of the page to draw more traffic towards its own businesses.

The company was also faced with anti-trust issues in the EU, where Google had to face accusations that favoured its own shopping services and were hurting the business of rival companies and its consumers. The internet behemoth would need to answer the charges on 17 August.

However, this practice apparently was not just directing money towards Mountain View, California.

According to a report by NeoWin, net-neutrality researchers from both Harvard and Columbia (with funding from Yelp) found that consumers were more likely to engage with a search result if the content was organic or not influenced by Google's skewed algorithms.