Most of us could live without Google; most would hate to have to try.

When a proprietary name becomes a verb, you can be sure a product or a service has become part of the fabric of daily existence. Whether ubiquity guarantees affection is another matter entirely.

On the one hand, there is the claim, doubtless already out of date, that Google handles 3.5 billion internet searches each day. The remarkable statistic is testimony to its success, but also a measure of the company's power. It is a gatekeeper to knowledge, but also - self-evidently - a conduit to the world of online business in which it has a large and growing stake. Does it play fair?

Much of the competition thinks not and the European Commission is minded to agree. Evidently the famous Google motto, "Don't be evil", is insufficiently reassuring amid allegations that the company has been favouring its own Google Shopping service by distorting search results. The usual word, not contained in the accusatory Statement of Objections issued by Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, is cheating.

What we have before us is, in one sense, a clash of cultures. For the giants of Silicon Valley, business is a game of winner takes all. If you have the best product, the right corporate plan and enough determination, you win. According to its proponents that is, or should be, the only "competition issue". As they would remind you, only winners are ever accused of abusing their dominance.

In Europe - and sometimes in Britain - there survives the belief that a few rules never go amiss, that real competition thrives when behemoths are prevented from trampling all before them. It is no coincidence that Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Intel and others have preceded Google in attracting the attention of the Commission. European ways are strange, and sometimes expensive, to them.

There is no point in prejudging the Google case. The company says it will be delighted to explain itself. It would be ill-advised, however, to employ what might be called the pure American theory of competition and argue that dissatisfied clients or rivals can go elsewhere. Such is Google's dominance, as a grumbling Mathias Döpfner of the German media company Axel Springer SE has observed, this is "about as realistic as recommending to an opponent of nuclear power that he just stop using electricity".

Google is an amazing enterprise: hence its vast success. Precisely for that reason the company cannot be allowed to believe that success brings no responsibilities to the societies in which it operates. It has prospered mightily in Europe. For that to continue, it will have to commit itself unequivocally to European standards of fair and free competition.

The Commission could make Google's life uncomfortable with fines. The example made of Intel - just over €1 billion - is not encouraging. But Ms Vestager could also enforce changes in behaviour that would threaten the search firm's business model. That language is understood on both sides of the Atlantic.