You don't take over the world without making a few enemies. Google have been plagued by legal trouble this year due to privacy issues in regards to their 'Google Maps/Streets' project and now the E.U is on their back after receiving complaints that the web king has 'abused its dominant position' in the online search market.
The European Union competition watchdogs formally announced their investigation, after rivals accused Google of “unfavourable treatment” of their services in both unpaid and sponsored search results. The commission wants to check if Google was “lowering the ranking of unpaid search results."
One of the complainants, British search site Foundem, said in a statement that its revenue “pales next to the hundreds of billions of dollars of other companies, revenue that Google controls indirectly through its search results and sponsored links.”
An investigation will takes months and even years in extreme cases, and at the end of it all, it does not necessarily mean legal action will follow. If Google are found 'guilty' they could be facing some hefty fines. Fines in similar cases have run to many hundreds of millions of Euros. That of course is pocket money to them.
If Google are big, bad cyber bullies then the smaller weaker search-engines deserve some sort of compensation but it's probably the case that suing Google is seen as any easy way to make money.
Source: financial times