Exclusive-Qwant asks French Watchdog to take tentative action against Microsoft, sources say

By foo yun cheese

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Qwant has called on French anti-trust regulators to take action against Microsoft to allegedly reduce the quality of French search engines through Microsoft’s Bing platform, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Qwant, which historically relied on Microsoft’s Bing platform, hopes regulators will take interim action against the US technology giant while investigating complaints, sources said.

French regulators are seeking feedback from other search engines, and are likely to decide whether to take tentative action by September and whether to open a formal investigation with Microsoft, one of the people said.

The enforcer of the competition will only take provisional action if there is evidence that the company has abused its market power and has seriously and immediately harmed the petitioner.

French competition enforcers and Qwant declined to comment.

“There is no merit with this complaint. We are fully involved in the investigation of Autorite,” a Microsoft spokesperson said of the French watchdog.

Smaller European search engines typically rely on larger rivals back-end technologies to provide search and news results.

Microsoft is a major player in the search engine syndication sector, but its small rivals fear that the company will discontinue service at their disadvantage.

Companies are risking a 10% fine of global annual sales for violating French antitrust rules.

(Reported by Foo Yun Cheeeediting Mark Potter)