Clearly Google has a major problem when friendly Canadians announce they are looking to litigate against the company. That looks set to happen as a letter obtained by the Financial Post showed Canada’s Competition Bureau is seeking experts in the areas of online search to bolster one of its major investigations.
“Potential experts should have extensive experience in digital and web-enabled marketing, advertising campaigns that employ search engines and publisher sites across multiple devices, and a thorough understanding of the Canadian market,” says the letter the paper obtained. The letters were sent to experts in search advertising across the country.
Based on the content of the rest of the letter it appears that the investigation is looking for help with the one it launched into Google in 2013. Court documents the bureau filed at the time said that it believed Google may have been engaged in several acts that were in violation of Canada’s competition laws. The call for experts indicates that the investigations is no only ongoing but is ramping up.
According to David Fewer, the director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the Canadian Bureau may have been motivated to escalate its investigation into Google after seeing the European Union escalating its own anti-trust investigation against the Mountain View based company.
The job posting probably means the investigation has entered a new phase, and that it may be preparing to announce how it intends to proceed.
Experts that received the letter must provide an answer by Monday, though we’ll likely need to wait longer to find out if the Competition Bureau will take Google to court.
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