The Europian Union today launched an investigation into Google after other search engines complained that the firm had abused its dominant position. The European Commission said the action followed complaints by search service providers including price comparison site Foundem and legal search engine ejustice.fr. about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google's unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged preferential placement of Google's own services. The EC will examine whether the world's largest search engine penalised competing services in its results. Earlier this year the attorney general of Texas launched a similar investigation following complaints from firms including Foundem.