BERLIN — Europe has spent years investigating Google’s alleged antitrust activities. Now the search giant wants a little more time to respond to the charges.

The European Commission on Thursday gave Google until the end of the month to answer claims that it favored its own comparison shopping search over those of rivals. The move came just days before an Aug. 17 deadline that Europe’s competition authorities had set for Google to respond to the accusations.

Google’s move on Monday to reorganize its business units under a new name, Alphabet, will not affect the antitrust case, according to European officials and antitrust lawyers. Under the new structure, Alphabet will act as a parent entity, with the biggest company under that umbrella being the traditional Google business, which includes the search engine, maps and the YouTube video service.

The Silicon Valley tech giant had already asked for an extension to the initial 10-week period that the European Commission had given for a response time.

Continue reading the main story How Europe Is Going After Amazon, Google and Other U.S. Tech Giants The biggest American tech companies face intensifying scrutiny by European regulators, with — pressure that could potentially curb their sizable profits in the region and affect how they operate around the world.

In a brief statement, a spokesman for the European Commission said that it “has granted an extension allowing Google to fully exercise its rights of defense.”

Europe’s charges have centered on how Google presents its online search services to users compared with rival offerings from the likes of Yelp, Microsoft and smaller European tech companies.

The lengthy investigation has led to complaints from some industry executives that Europe is unfairly focusing on American tech companies. Europe is also carrying out separate competition, tax and privacy investigations into Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

European policy makers say that they have not specifically targeted American tech companies and that their aim is to enforce the region’s tough rules and create a level playing field for all companies to operate in the 28-member bloc.

As part of this effort, Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s antitrust chief, announced formal charges against the search giant in April, saying Google favored its own shopping services over those of rivals.

European officials also continue to investigate whether Google promoted its other so-called vertical searches, like online travel and restaurant listings, unfairly over others. And the region’s antitrust authorities opened a separate inquiry into Google’s dominant Android mobile operating system, which is used by almost three-quarters of Europe’s smartphone users, according to the data provider IDC.

This so-called statement of objections, or formal charges against Google, could have a serious financial impact on the company, the world’s second largest by market capitalization, after Apple. If Google is found to have breached Europe’s antitrust rules, Ms. Vestager could levy a fine exceeding $6.6 billion, or about 10 percent of Google’s annual revenue.

These financial penalties may be based on revenue generated from European users on the company’s AdWords online advertising service, according to two people with knowledge of the statement of objections. Europe also may extend fines linked to revenue from Google’s comparison-shopping service in Europe and revenue from product queries on Google’s search engine in the region, the two people added.

Unlike in the United States, official antitrust charges in the European Union are typically not made public.

Europe’s 120-page statement of objections, which has been sent to Google and several complainants in the case, also threatened to force the company to use the same methods and processes to rank rival services as it does for its own search products.

That is a significant change to previous efforts to end Europe’s competition case. Last year, Joaquín Almunia, the former European antitrust commissioner, initially agreed to settle the investigation after Google said it would allow rivals to place their vertical search results next to its own, as long as they paid to do so.

Competitors and many European lawmakers, however, balked at that deal, which eventually fell apart and laid the groundwork for the European Commission’s formal antitrust charges against Google.

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