Alphabet Slammed With Antitrust Charges By EU Yet Again

Last week The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that EU was gearing up to file fresh antitrust charges against Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) over its dominance in advertising that is said to be violating competition rules.

The EU was said to be preparing a formal Statement of Objections for which, it was seeking statements from the companies who had filed complaints against Google to publish some of their confidential information.

The news turned out to be more than true as The European Commission issued two Statements of Objections against the search giant on Thursday accusing it of using its web search dominance unlawfully to hurt its competitors.

The Allegations

The first statement accuses Google of preventing advertisers under its fold from using or switching to other competing search advertising platforms.

The second one is a reinforcement of the existing allegation that the company misuses its search results to benefit its own shopping service.

If Google is found to have broken the rules, it might have to pay penalties of up to 10% of its worldwide revenues, which was $74.5 billion in 2015.

The EU has given Google 10 weeks to respond to the ad related case and 8 weeks to the shopping service charge.

Watch Your Back Google

Mired in legal troubles across practically all continents, Google is surely facing a huge drain on resources and earning a bad name on privacy concerns, anti-competitive concerns, patent infringements and what have you.

Though the company so far has had extraordinary success in the courtroom and with government officials around the world, its streak of “good luck” can change any time. Therefore, investors remain wary.

At present, Google has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Some better-ranked stocks worth considering are Blue Calypso, Inc. (OTC:BCYP) , Blucora, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCOR) and LivePerson Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).