Google accused of burying webmail service on search results

ProtonMail says it was in effect removed from Google for almost a year, demonstrating the existence of 'search risk'

Google has been accused of hiding a competitor's webmail service from its search results in a "suspicious" manner for almost a year, costing the service hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost traffic.

The company, ProtonMail, provides encrypted email accounts for users, and has been one of the most popular services of that type since its launch in 2014, as reflected by its Google search ranking: the company says it was placed "on the first or second page of most [relevant] queries including 'encrypted email' and 'secure email'".