Image: brionv/Flickr
Google is not taking the European Union's antitrust allegations lightly.Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in a blog post this afternoon that Google will fight EU allegations that the company has abused its dominance in online search, promoting Google services to the detriment of its rivals.Walker said the allegations were wrong "as a matter of fact, law, and economics.""The response we filed today," Walker wrote, "shows why we believe those allegations are incorrect, and why we believe that Google increases choice for European consumers and offers valuable opportunities for businesses of all sizes."In its response, Google said that its search results have sent "more than 20 billion free clicks" to other companies over the past decade. Being forced to modify the way its search algorithms work would only hurt consumers, Google argued, because search results are already tailored for them.The EU's antitrust investigation has been ongoing for the past four years. The European body believes Google abused its dominance in online search by steering customers toward its other services in search results, such as Google Shopping (Google has 90 percent of the search market in Europe). In response, Google has consistently said it has plenty of successful competitors, including Amazon and eBay, whose success prove that the company hasn't broken any competition laws.A decision in the investigation could come by the end of the year at the earliest, unnamed EU officials told the New York Times. The EU could ultimately fine Google as much as 10 percent of its global yearly revenue, which would work out to about $6.6 billion.