Exclusive-Qwant asks French watchdog to take interim action against Microsoft, sources say

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Qwant has asked France's antitrust regulator to take action against Microsoft for allegedly driving down the quality of the French search engine's results via Microsoft's Bing platform, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Qwant, which has historically relied on Microsoft's Bing platform, wants the regulator to take interim action against the U.S. tech giant while investigating its complaint, the sources said.

The French regulator has sought feedback from other search engines and will likely decide by September whether to take interim action and also whether to open a formal investigation into Microsoft, one of the people said.

Competition enforcers only take interim action if there is evidence that a company abuses its market power and has caused serious and immediate harm to the complainant.

The French competition enforcer and Qwant declined to comment.

"This complaint lacks merit. We are fully cooperating with the Autorite's investigation," a Microsoft spokesperson said, referring to the French watchdog.

Smaller European search engines typically rely on their bigger rivals' back-end technology to deliver search and news results.

Microsoft is a major player in the search-engine syndication sector but its smaller rivals fear the company will discontinue the service to their detriment.

Companies risk fines of as much as 10% of their global annual turnover for breaching French antitrust rules.

(Reporting by Foo Yun CheeEditing by Mark Potter)