An unidentified Google spokesman told the press yesterday that the European Commission has extended the original deadline for replying to the charges from July 17 to August 31.
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The two-week extension is the third given to the California tech giant.
The EU in response had said those changes wouldn’t affect its antitrust investigations into the company and that it was sticking to its latest deadline for Google to respond to the formal charges in the shopping search case.
The search engine company had originally been given a deadline of July 7 by which to acknowledge the statement of objections or charge sheet. “This means that the reply is now due on 31 August”, he said.
Google has been given two more weeks to prepare a defence against an impending EU Commission probe about potential abuse of market position.
“In line with normal practice, the commission analyzed the reasons for the request”, Ricardo Cardoso, a spokesman for the Brussels-based commission said Thursday. “As a outcome, it has granted an extension permitting Google to absolutely train its rights of defence”, Commission…
V3 contacted Google for comment on the decision but had received no reply at the time of publication.
The charges brought by European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in April escalated a five-year investigation that Google has tried to settle three times without success. Regulators claim that Google unfairly skewed search results to direct users to its own sites and suppressed competition from outside firms.
“Google now has the opportunity to convince the EC to the contrary”.
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Google earlier this week announced it would restructure its company, separating its highly profitable search and advertising business from its other ventures and organizing them under the holding company Alphabet Inc.
