EC pushes Google for more changes in web search

The European Commission (EC) wants Google to implement additional changes in the way it presented web search results beyond those it had already requested, The Register reported.

Google has been attempting to arrive at a settlement with the EC after claims over the company's alleged unfair dominance of the internet search market in Europe.

According to the company's rivals Google unfairly ranked its own services over competing offerings, and scraped their sites for material to use itself.

After the last round of concessions in the manner in which it ranked websites, were passed on to Google's rivals to consider, who expressed dissatisfaction the concessions offered.

In replies to EC's letters, Google's rivals had submitted new arguments, which the EC has asked Google to see if it would agree to, Reuters reported commission spokesman Antoine Colombani as saying.

The Commission had now been investigating Google's search business for nearly four years over claims that it illegally played favourites with its own products.

Meanwhile, Joaquín Almunia, commission vice president in charge of competition policy, told Bloomberg TV in an interview with on Saturday: "Some of these replies are very, very negative. And in some of those replies, some complainants have introduced new arguments, new data, new considerations.

So we now need to analyse this and to see if we can find solutions, if Google can find solutions, to some of these concerns we find justified, we are in this process," he said.

Almunia left unsaid whether the complaints would prompt the Commission to look to other ways of settling the case, IT World reported.

"We are in an ongoing process so I cannot anticipate the end, I cannot anticipate the conclusions," he said, adding that the Commission was trying to understand the "solid arguments" of the complainants and was trying to extract solutions from Google.

Lead complainant Foundem was pleased with Almunia's comments and that the feedback was seen to be justified.

"However, we are troubled that Commissioner Almunia seems minded to give Google an unprecedented fourth opportunity to propose further tweaks to a remedy package that has never been anything more than a confidence trick," Shivaun Raff, one of Foundem's founders, said.