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Google for Jobs faces European regulator scrutiny

August 28, 2019

Google for Jobs is getting looked at by European competition authorities over concerns about anti-competitive practices.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager called out the company in a speech on Tuesday in Berlin at the Business Forum of the German Ambassadors’ Conference.

Vestager noted Google’s dominance in search, as an operating system — 80% of the world’s smartphones and tablets use its Android operating system — and that Google is dominant in online advertising. But Google doesn’t just operate a platform, it competes with other companies that rely on its platform — creating a possible conflict of interest, she said.

“That’s what Google did, when it used the power of its search engine to favor its own comparison shopping service,” Vestager said. “By doing that, it harmed competition and consumers — which is why we fined the company nearly €2.5 billion, for breaking the competition rules. And we’re looking right now at whether the same thing may have happened with other parts of Google’s business — like the job search business known as Google for Jobs.”

The comments come after 23 European job boards sent a letter to her earlier this month saying Google for Jobs represented unfair competition.

Vestager’s speech also likened companies such as Google and Facebook to robot vacuum cleaners, sucking up valuable data from all corners of the Internet.

“The way that these companies collect and use data can undermine competition – and if it does, then we may need to take action, to enforce the competition rules,” she said.

The Telegraph newspaper reported a response from Google: “Finding a job can be tough, so we worked with jobs providers to create a better experience on Search,” Google told The Telegraph. “Any provider — from individual employers to job listing platforms — can use this feature in Search, and many of them have seen a significant increase in the number of job applications they receive. Since launch, we’ve made a number of changes to address feedback in Europe.”

Separately, Google announced it will close down its Google Hire applicant tracking system and recruiting software offering on Sept. 1, 2020.