The decision by the European Commission is intended to address
complaints from competitors concerned that Google favors its own results
over theirs. By announcing the start of market testing, the commission
allows others in the industry to weigh in.
The commission said it needed to intervene because “Google has had a
strong position in Web search in most European countries for a number of
years now” and because it “does not seem likely that another Web search
service will replace it as European users’ Web search service of
choice.”
The market testing would last for one month and a final settlement could
be agreed upon after the summer, said Antoine Colombani, a spokesman
for the E.U. competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia.
The agreement would be legally binding for five years, and a third party
would ensure compliance. If the deal is accepted, Google would avoid a
fine and a finding of wrongdoing. But it could face a fine of as much as
10 percent of its global annual sales if it failed to keep its
promises. Google did not issue any immediate comment.
The deal would allow Google to escape the type of lengthy and expensive
antitrust battles that Microsoft faced in Europe over its media player
and server software.
The European Commission has taken a tougher line with Google on the
issue of how it runs its search rankings than has the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission. In January, the U.S. commission decided, after a 19-month
inquiry, that Google had not broken antitrust laws.
About 86 percent of all online searches in Europe are conducted using
Google, according to the Web analyst comScore. In the United States, it
has about two-thirds of the market.
One of the centerpieces of Google’s offer is to show links from
competitors who offer specialized search services. In cases where Google
sells advertising next to results for particular vertical markets like
restaurants and hotels, Google would provide a menu of at least three
options for non-Google search services.
That plan is analogous to a system Microsoft agreed to in 2009, offering
users of newly purchased computers in Europe a ballot screen enabling
them to download other Web-browser software from the Internet and to
turn off Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer. Last month, the
commission fined Microsoft $732 million for lapses in adhering to that
settlement.
Google would also label results pointing to its own services — like
YouTube — as Google properties and separate them from general search
results with a box. The boxes would be mandatory, and probably heavily
outlined, in cases where Google makes money from advertising that
appears with the search results.
Google also would mark results from its own services li
ke weather or news where it does not collect money from advertising. Those frames could be boxes with a lighter outline.
In areas in which all search results are paid ads, like shopping, Google will auction links to rivals.
Google is pledging to restrict the way it integrates content from other
sites and media into its own products. It would need “to offer all
specialized search web sites that focus on product search or local
search the option to mark certain categories of information in such a
way that such information is not indexed or used by Google,” the
commission said in its statement.
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