Getty Images Lodges Complaint Against Google With EU
April 27 2016 - 5:40AM
Dow Jones News
BRUSSELS—Getty Images Inc., the world's largest photo agency,
said Wednesday it has lodged an official complaint with the
European Union's antitrust watchdog over Alphabet Inc.'s Google,
accusing the U.S. technology giant of abusing its dominance in
search to display copied images without compensation.
The fresh complaint comes after the European Commission filed a
new set of formal charges against Google last week for abusing its
dominance with its Android mobile operating system to protect its
search engine. The EU has also charged Google for allegedly skewing
search results to favor its own shopping service.
The commission is already investigating allegations that Google
copies or "scrapes" rival Web content, but so far hasn't issued any
formal charges in the area.
Announcing the formal complaint, Getty Images said Google
"scrapes" or copies content from publishers to display the images
in search results and unfairly favors its image-search service over
rivals.
The U.S. tech company reinforces its dominance in search and
maintains a monopoly over site traffic, data and advertising by
proposing to remove the providers' images entirely from search
results if they don't consent to the content being copied, Getty
Images said. Removing the images from search would make them
invisible on the Internet, the photo agency said.
Google didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The official complaint follows on previous submissions to the
commission last year that have allowed the firm to participate in
hearings and submit evidence to the commission regarding the
continuing investigations into Google.
Getty Images said that following changes made to Google's image
search function in 2013, the U.S. search giant now displays
high-resolution, large format images in its search results,
removing the incentive for consumers to click through to the
original source website.
"This format has diverted users away from source sites and
siphoned traffic from Getty Images, other media organizations and
image creators," Getty Images said in a statement.
The slowing traffic has resulted in fewer images from the photo
agency being licensed and purchased, hitting Getty Images' revenue
growth, a person familiar with the situation said.
Google previously only displayed low-resolution thumbnails that
led users to the images' main websites, Getty said.
Getty Images, majority owned by private-equity firm Carlyle
Group and part-owned by members of the Getty oil family, has a
digital trove of more than 100 million images, which it licenses
and sells to publishers, advertisers and websites.
News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, last week filed a
similar complain t, accusing Google of reinforcing its dominance in
general search by "scraping" or copying content from publishers to
display the results of news articles, according to a person
familiar with the matter.
"Europe's antitrust regulators have recognized the harm to
competition caused by Google's practices, and we ask for the same
level of scrutiny to be paid to this issue in other geographies,"
Getty Images General Counsel Yoko Miyashita said in a blog
post.
Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 27, 2016 06:25 ET (10:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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