The European Commission is looking into complaints from three online companies that Google Inc's search functions penalized their businesses, The Daily Telegraph reported in its Wednesday edition.

The paper said the European Commission has written to Google to find out how its search functions work, following allegations from UK price comparison site, Foundem, Ciao, owned by Microsoft Corp and a online French guide to legal services, ejustice.fr.

No one at Google could immediately be reached for comment.

Google had 90 percent of the global search market compared with 7.4 percent for a combined Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing, according to November data from Web research firm StatCounter.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; editing by Andre Grenon)

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