Google has made progress toward an antitrust settlement with the European Union after the bloc’s competition chief said the firm had offered remedies with “significant” improvements.
“Google has now improved the commitments it has offered - we have negotiated improvements until yesterday,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia has said.
“If our investigation of this improved proposal is satisfactory, I will continue the commitments route and end up with a formal decision next spring.”
The European Commission in November 2010 opened a probe into whether Google promotes its own services, copies rivals’ reviews, and has agreements with websites and software developers that stifle competition in the advertising industry.
Google’s latest offer includes a commitment by the Mountain View, California-based company “to support its new proposals with empirical data to show their impact,” Almunia said.
The new offer will be tested with selected complainants and the “relevant market participants.”
The EU regulator and Google will cooperate in the next weeks “to finalise the precise wording of the commitment text,” said Almunia, adding that the “new proposal more adequately addresses the need for any commitments to be able to cover future developments.”
“Given the feedback the European Commission received on our first proposal, they have insisted on further, significant changes to the way we display search results,” Kent Walker, senior vice president and General Counsel at Google, said in an e-mailed statement.
“While competition online is thriving, we’ve made the difficult decision to agree to their requirements in the interests of reaching a settlement.”
Almunia told Bloomberg Television last month that Google had submitted a new proposal to address the commission’s competition concerns and help it settle the case.
A remedies offer by Google in April to label its branded search services and show links to rival specialized search services was rejected as insufficient by Almunia in July.
Google rivals, including Microsoft, have urged the EU to seek tougher concessions from the company.
Competitors and users were able to review Google’s proposed remedies the first time around and are asking the Brussels-based commission to market test the latest offer, which is not public.
