Integroo

Hi chaps. I'm not a car dealer, and just lurk here out of interest, so apologies in advance if this is not allowed. What I am is a European competition lawyer, i.e. the area of law relevant to the Google case you are discussing. I thought I could maybe provide some insight. The Google case is not fundamentally about treating consumers unfairly; it's about a breach of the competition law prohibition against abusing a dominant position. The argument runs that Google is dominant in the market for Internet search, and should not be abusing their dominance in that market by favouring it's own services in a different but related market (the market for shopping comparison services) by placing Google Shopping first at the top of it's search results. Unfortunately the whistleblowing line isn't directly relevant, as it relates to cartels i.e. anticompetitive agreements between competitors. There are of course comparisons that can be drawn to AutoTrader. The first question is are they dominant - normally one would consider below 40% market share unlikely to be dominant, above 70% likely to be dominant, in between possibly dominant depending on the structure of the market. Instinctively I'd suggest that the market for dealer sales and private sales may be separate (very generally speaking the question would be whether a small but significant, say 5%, price increase by dealers would drive customers to private sales - if the answer is no, the markets are separate). If they are separate, it may be considered dominant, though more investigation would be needed. The question would then be are they abusing their dominance to the detriment of competition and ultimately to consumers by favouring sponsored adverts. I'd say this could be argued either way, but there is an argument there. I'd suggest if you wanted to tackle this, writing to the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK would be the best bet (though no harm in copying it to the European Commission), stating that you think there are competition concerns in this market that should be investigated by the CMA. They may open a market study. However the concerns expressed should not be the impact on dealers - it should be the negative impact on consumers (higher prices primarily through poorer competition between rival dealers). Hopefully insightful and hopefully allowed. Happy to answer any questions anonymously - this is not legal advice, just some friendly insights.