The anti-trust investigation into Google's possible monopoly in Europe has opened.The case is based on the claims of three companies who accuse Google of intentionally anticompetitive policies in its search and advertising.

Foundem, a price-comparison site, eJustice, a French search engine for legal inquiries, say that Google of altering its supposedly impartial search results to give them less prominent ranking. They claim that the low pagerank is due to those two sites offering a service that competes with Google itself. Complainant number three Ciao Bing hasn't said why it is involved. The Microsoft subsidiary might be upset about Adsense.

But Microsoft's hand can also be seen behind Foundem.  Foundem is part of an internet pressure group" ICOMP, which is partially funded by Microsoft. Of course all this might go now where. It is not the first time that Google has been up before the beak for antitrust violations and it has always walked away before. The search giant claims that their search engine isn't perfect, due to the difficulty of indexing and ordering the world wide wibble. It claims there is nothing intentional about the listing.

But the EU is getting nasty over anti-trust behaviour from big US multi-nationals, just ask Intel and Microsoft. Of course Microsoft being involved in the case might not help.  The EU investigators are just as likely to think that it is one convicted monopolist trying to convict its rivals of the same crime.