Google is facing a European Competition Commission enquiry regarding complaints about the way Google is behaving in the way it displays its search results.
Each of the complainers have different arguments, however, all are search engines in their own right and are basically arguing that Google’s search results are being displayed as objective, when in fact they are influenced by the marketing objectives of Google and the company’s business model.
For example, Founderm is a comparison website, essentially a vertical search engine, they argue that their results are being demoted (what we would call being sandboxed) whilst Google’s own Product Listings are inserted into the SERPs with no explanation that these do not form part of the organic search results.
The arguments are interesting and we need to keep an eye on the decisions made by the European Commission, however as the inclusion of the universal algo with services such as video, product and maps (all of which Google has a vested interest in) as well as real-time search results has only improved the search results quality and relevance, it is difficult to see how this can be seen as Google acting as a monopoly.