Qwant asks French watchdog to take interim action against Microsoft
has asked France's antitrust regulator to take action against
Microsoft
for allegedly driving down the quality of the French search engine's results via Microsoft's
Bing platform
, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Qwant, which has historically relied on Microsoft's Bing platform, wants the regulator to take interim action against the US tech giant while investigating its complaint, the sources said.
Competition enforcers only take interim action if there is evidence that a company abuses its market power and has caused serious and immediate harm to the complainant.
The French competition enforcer and Qwant declined to comment.
"This complaint lacks merit. We are fully cooperating with the Autorite's investigation," a Microsoft spokesperson said, referring to the French watchdog.
Smaller
European search engines
typically rely on their bigger rivals' back-end technology to deliver search and news results.
Microsoft is a major player in the search-engine syndication sector but its smaller rivals fear the company will discontinue the service to their detriment.
Companies risk fines of as much as 10% of their global annual turnover for breaching French
antitrust rules
.
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