EC details Google's proposed search concessions - CNET

Google offers to label its own services in search results and give some prominence to rivals. European competitiveness regulators now want feedback. April 25, 2013 4:25 AM PDT Google's proposal for resolving a European investigation into antitcompetitive practices in search includes labeling its own services in search results, showing services from rivals nearby, and letting specialized search services block Google from using their content. The European Commission published Google's proposed resolution for the long-running case today and requesting feedback. That feedback is sure to include scorn from the FairSearch.org coalition and other rivals who say Google has squeezed them off the Web. The EC investigation has focused on whether Google has used its dominance in search to promote its own services such as comparison shopping, maps, and travel services at the expense of those in those businesses who previously got a lot of their business through Google search results. According to the EC, Google proposed to do the following for five years in the European Economic Area, which includes the European Union along with Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway: • label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that users can distinguish them from natural web search results, • clearly separate these promoted links from other web search results by clear graphical features (such as a frame), and • display links to three rival specialised search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users, • offer all websites the option to opt-out from the use of all their content in Google's specialised search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly affect the ranking of those web sites in Google's general web search results, • offer all specialised 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, • provide newspaper publishers with a mechanism allowing them to control on a web page per web page basis the display of their content in Google News, no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google, and no longer impose obligations that would prevent advertisers from managing search advertising campaigns across competing advertising platforms. via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGVLUzdUNqP04SupeKOCPvBjvttBQ&url=http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57581339-93/ec-details-googles-proposed-search-concessions/

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