Nothing new, but yet again: Google accused of degrading search results to favor its own products
And now, it is not the EU regulator who accuses but the American (Google-rival) company Yelp (who paid researched for this study).
▻http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8860933/google-search-tim-wu-yelp-criticism-neutrality
With a particular focus on search for local services and information, the researchers find that “consumers vastly prefer ... competitive results, as scored by Google’s own search engine, than results chosen by Google.” Local searches are said to now constitute a third of Google’s overall search traffic (the proportion on mobile is even higher, rising to 50 percent), so the way the company handles them is indeed significant. That being said, the metric by which consumer preference is measured in this study is simple clicks: people were 45 percent more likely to click on organic search results than they were on Google’s tailored search that presents its own list of nearby businesses or services.
The paper can be found here:
▻http://www.slideshare.net/lutherlowe/wu-l
A comprehensive explanation of the problem:
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9UqqmIJW4g