Brussels — Google has tackled new accusations on Tuesday that it was blocking a small European search service, limiting the use of its powerful system to attract advertisers.
A French company, 1plusV, which owns the Ejustice .fr, one of the three companies that have already deposited accusations against Google, has said that he sent a supplementary complaint to the European Commission, the European Union's executive body.
The Commission initiated a formal antitrust investigation of Google, three months ago looking for evidence that Google had the power to shut out competition and restrict advertisers to do business with other search engines.
A Commission spokesman, Amadeu Altafaj, said "give Google the ability to comment on the accusations levelled before deciding on what, if any further steps to take."
Google's advertising service, called AdSense, allows advertisers to buy a keyword, when you type in a search query, produces a link advertising alongside the search results. Marie-Cécile Rameau, a lawyer who represents 1plusV, said that Google was preventing the websites operated by 1plusV from using AdSense with its search technology.
MS. Rameau, who practice "hinders development of efficient vertical search engines" that could compete with the specialist services of Google, said in Brussels. It also prevented consumers access to technologies that could provide them with more search options, he said.
At Verney, a Google spokesman, said that it continued to work closely with the European Commission to explain many different parts of our business. " He refused to comment on specific allegations from 1plusV.
Echoing earlier statements from Google on the case in Europe, Mr. Verney said the company had "always tried to do the right thing for our users and advertisers" and added, "there is always room for improvement."
In a complaint to the regulatory authorities a year ago, the European Ejustice. fr claimed that Google has removed most of its pages to an online index. Consequently, the ejustice said visits to its site suddenly dropped so sharply that was actually invisible on the Web.
But he said that the action was necessary because Ejustice. fr was violating its guidelines on how to make your website findable in Google search engine. That was a problem, according to Google, because users might end up never find a Web page with the answer to their question — just several pages of search results.
Bruno Guillard, owner of 1plusV, said Tuesday that Google had begun to make those pages findable again on its search engine as part of a process known as whitelisting, which started after the European Union regulators launched their formal investigation on 30 November.
MS. Rameau, the lawyer said, "The whitelisting massive since the opening of proceedings by the Commission clearly demonstrates that the blacklist, in March, was completely arbitrary".
Mr. Guillard said Google's actions meant losses for its holding of "a lot of millions" of dollars, but he refused to give a specific number. Aides to Mr. Guillard, said the company was still calculate total losses.
Mr. Guillard also said Google's actions meant that another site powered by 1plusV, Eguides, had lost a contract with the French national library to help make their resources available online.
"Due to traffic collapse" French library "understandably thought Eguides. fr was no longer a suitable partner and signed an agreement with Microsoft," said 1plusV.
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