The European Commission on Thursday said it was launching a new investigation into US-based search engine Google amid accusations that the company buries some news sites in its search results as spam.

The EU's case revolves around media outlets that include content from commercial partners, for example sponsored editorials.

Google is once again facing the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) that regulates online competition in the 27-member bloc. Google's parent company, Alphabet, was slapped with a €2.95 billion ($3.4 billion) in September, following a DMA probe.

The investigation was announced despite threats from US President Trump that he would impose sanctions on countries that investigate US tech companies.

What did the EU and Google say about the investigation?

"We are concerned that Google's policies do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner in its search results," EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said.

"We will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry," Ribera said.

The European Commission said it wanted to conclude its investigation in 12 months.

Google rejected the accusations, calling them "without merit." The tech giant defended its anti-spam policies.

"This surprising new investigation risks rewarding bad actors and degrading the quality of search results," Google Search chief scientist Pandu Nayak said in a blog post.

If the Commission finds that a company breached the DMA, it can impose fines of up to 10% of total global turnover, going up to 20% for repeat offenders.

Edited by: Sean Sinico