California, Feb 18- Soon after California-based technology giant Google made public the text of its settlement offer to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, a proposal obtained in the context of an ongoing antitrust investigation on online search and search advertising, lobby groups FairSearch and iComp said the proposal needs to be subjected to market testing.
With the agreement reached with the EC, Google could avoid some $5 billion in fines, it is reported.
“We welcome Google’s unilateral decision to publish a non-confidential version of its commitments, but will continue to stress the importance of market testing to demonstrate the effectiveness of these commitments to restore competition to search,” Fox News.com quoted FairSearch, a lobbying organisation supported by Microsoft, Oracle, Nokia and others.
Meanwhile, Reuters quoted officials as saying a third of the members of the EC opposed the EU’s decision to strike a deal with Google and end a three-year antitrust investigation, underlining the political sensitivity of the decision.
The EC had earlier hailed the commitments proposal it received from Google. “Google has now accepted to guarantee that whenever it promotes its own specialized search services on its Web page (e.g. for products, hotels, restaurants, etc.), the services of three rivals, selected through an objective method, will also be displayed in a way that is clearly visible to users and comparable to the way in which Google displays its own services,” the Commission said.
-India Today
