인터넷 검색서비스의 규제 논의에 대한비판적 검토

Abstract

There is a concern of search bias in internet server search. It’s about the internet server search operator provides its own contents preferential than of other competitive vertical search engines or even not expose. In this case, the competitive vertical search engines will be excluded from the market and the market power in search market of internet portal transferred to specialized vertical search service market, which is adjacent market. This concern starts from Google case first. In 2007, Google changed its display way of searching, from the blue link method that offers only an external site link depending on the search service ranking associated of query, to the method for offering its own contents on the first page, which has been inspired from the US and EU competitive authorities. About Google’s method changing of search results, the FTC focused on the point that it can be viewed as an innovation to increase consumer welfare, and decided not to take any action regard to these “search bias” allegations. In contrast, the EU treats Google’s action as a violation of law which will lead the user’s misunderstanding and the exclusion effect on competitive specialized search site. In 2013, the Korea Fair Trade Commission also treated the way of showing its own contents in general search results which happens in Naver and Daum as illegal, so that they executed investigation overit. KFTC insists that it can be viewed as cross-selling of market dominant operator, which would lead forced transaction or exclusion of competitive operator. In domestically, it finally ends by marking the company’s own service and providing a link to the competitive site. The discussion on modifying search bias of search service operator is still raised. It tries to treat search service as the categories of telecommunications to prepare regulations in advance in telecommunication law system. In other words, it means to impose a special pre-ban obligation to the business operator who has a dominant force in the market definition of the search service. However, the search service is only likely response of search engine by query language of the user, it’s difficult to treat as telecommunications in functional. In addition, if regulate market under the situation not easy to judge market definition and market power, there is a danger of falling into the error of excessive enforcement and hindrance of internet industry’s innovation. On the other hand, if impose competitive law in search service industry, the method of showing search results can be seen only the difference of business model, can’t be seen an illegality. Toward the changing method from blue link to Universal search of Google, the EU also just expressed concern that it may lead user’s misunderstanding and exclusion effect on competitive specialized search sites, they also said it is difficult to say that the Universal search is a violation of law itself. In the case of the domestic search services market, in order to avoid infringement of intellectual property rights by other’s unauthorized crawl, it provide search contents results turned into DB through directly or partnership, and there is not many Korean content from the search service fetal movement stage. Therefore, the concern of leading user’s misunderstanding and exclusion effect of competitors in domestic market is much less than Google. Competition law is a law system which needs uncertain concept of market definition, the judgment of market power, and the restrictive competition conditions, and there may be some errors happen in the executive process. Even deal with the post-executive procedure, it still has risk of the errors of enforcement happen. Therefore, the competition law of the internet search service should also be executed carefully.