Jobindex Sues Google For Prioritizing Google For Jobs In Search Results For Jobs

Google For Jobs is considered preferred by Google. (photo: screenshot)

JAKARTA - Google again faced complaints about its monopolistic behavior on Monday, June 27 by its online job search rival, Jobindex. The Danish company told European Union regulators that the Alphabet-owned business allegedly unfairly favored its own job search service, Google for Jobs.

The complaint could revive EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's oversight of the service, Google for Jobs. Three years ago, Vestager said he was investigating the matter but he had not taken any action.

The European Commission said it would assess the complaint according to standard procedures. Jobindex's action comes four years after German media group job portal Axel Springer Stepstone filed a similar complaint against Google.

Google, which has been fined more than 8 billion euros (IDR 124 trillion) by Vestager in recent years for various anti-competitive practices, said it was partnering with job providers to direct people to websites with job listings relevant to them.

"Any job provider, big or small, can take part and companies are seeing increased traffic and job matches as a result of this feature," a Google spokesperson said.

Launched in Europe in 2018, Google for Jobs sparked criticism from 23 online job search websites in 2019. They said it had lost market share after the online search giant allegedly used its market power to push its new service.

Big tech companies are using their market dominance to push their own products, gaining an unfair advantage over their smaller European rivals and fueling antitrust complaints.

Google services links to posts collected from many companies, allowing candidates to filter, save, and get alerts about vacancies, even if they have to go elsewhere to apply. Google places a large widget for the tool at the top of regular web search results.

Jobindex, one of 23 critics three years ago, said Google had turned the highly competitive Danish market in their own direction through anti-competitive means.

Founder and CEO, Kaare Danielsen, said Jobindex had built the largest job database in Denmark when Google For Jobs only entered the local market last year.

"Nevertheless, in the short time after the introduction of Google for Jobs, in Denmark, Jobindex lost 20% of search traffic to lower Google services," Danielsen told Reuters.

"By placing its own inferior services at the top of the results page, Google is actually hiding some of the most relevant job offers from job seekers. Recruiters in turn may no longer reach all job seekers, unless they use Google job services," he said.

"This not only hinders competition among hiring services, it directly damages the labor market, which is the center of any economy," Danielsen said.

He urged the EU Commission to order Google to stop its alleged anti-competitive practices, fine the company and enforce periodic payments to ensure compliance.

Jobindex said it had seen examples of free-riding, with some of its own job ads copied without permission and marketed through Google for Jobs on behalf of Jobindex's business partners. It also mentions the privacy risks for job applicants and their clients.

The Jobindex complaint could gather momentum among peers, such as British price comparison site Foundem, whose complaint against Google prompted a number of rivals to come forward and sparked a decade-long investigation that ended in hefty fines for Google.

Google has been sued multiple times for issues ranging from encouraging phone makers to support its own apps to distorting internet search results in favor of its shopping service.

In February, Swedish price comparison company PriceRunner sued Google for around 2.1 billion euros, saying nothing had changed even after Google was fined 2.42 billion euros in 2017 for supporting its own price comparison shopping service.