Google-EU Deal Wouldn’t Target Global Solution, Almunia Says

Google’s competitors, clamoring for the European Union to press the search company to make global changes, face disappointment after the bloc’s antitrust chief said any settlement would focus on Europe. While confined to Google’s competition issues there, any accord to end the European Union’s antitrust probe that started in 2010 must stand the test of time and be impossible to circumvent, Joaquin Almunia said. Google this month submitted an offer to the Brussels-based European Commission that would create more distinction in Internet searches between its own services and those of its competitors, according to a person familiar with the talks.

“The U.S. and the EU have different systems and, on top of that, Google has a very different market position in the U.S., where its competitors have a market share of around 30 percent,” Almunia said in response to written questions. “In Europe, Google’s market share is more than 90 percent.” Rivals, such as Microsoft, want the EU to extract changes after the U.S. closed a 20-month investigation into whether Google unfairly promoted its own services in search results. The Federal Trade Commission in January concluded that Google was motivated more by wanting to improve its search results than by a desire to stifle competition.