Google Search (Shopping) as a Precedent for Disintermediation in Other Sectors - The Example of Google for Jobs

摘要

In general, even companies with a dominant position on any intermediation market may seek to disintermediate any ancillary intermediation markets with a view to internalising them into their own platform. However, any such attempt must be based on competition on the merits. In particular, a company may not use its dominance on an upstream intermediation market as an unfair lever to also reserve to itself any downstream intermediation services. This is what happened in the case of Google Search (Shopping), where Google favoured Google Shopping in its search results in order to lever its dominance in general search services into the market for comparison shopping services. With its preferential positioning and display of Google for Jobs on its general search results pages, Google is now (somewhat unsurprisingly) following the same pattern with a view to disintermediating online recruitment services. Google is pushing all online recruitment services down on its general search results pages and thus making them less visible to users, unless they "agree" to co-operate with Google by handing over, at no charge, all their valuable job content as structured data to Google for Jobs. In order to remain visible online, they are commercially forced to make another platform more attractive to job seekers, a platform that is designed to and is capable of replacing them. The bundling of job content from all competing online recruitment services will allow Google to position and market Google for Jobs as the "one-stop-shop" intermediary for jobs. Once the service has secured a critical mass of job seekers to tip the market, given the network effects, it will be almost impossible for competing online recruitment services to catch up. At such point in time at the latest, Google will find it easy to switch to a paid-for-inclusion model, in which every recruiter has to bid for inclusion of a job posting in Jobs Units. The consequence will be ever-increasing costs for recruiters to the detriment of European labour markets. Against this background, Google's conduct with regard to Google for Jobs constitutes a prima facie case of abuse of dominance as set out in the framework of the Google Shopping (Search) decision. Considering the irreparable harm caused to the market for online recruitment services, it would not come as a surprise if, despite the high legal hurdles, the Commission considered interim measures to stop the abuse.