Commission seeks feedbacks to take them into account in its analysis of Google's commitment proposals

Google has made proposals to try to address the European Commission's four competition concerns. The Commission has concerns that Google may be abusing its dominant position in the markets for web search, online search advertising and online search advertising intermediation in the European Economic Area (EEA). Therefore, the Commission is seeking feedbacks on commitments offered by Google to address these competition concerns.

The European Commission invites comments from interested parties on commitments offered by Google to address the Commission's four competition concerns. In particular, the Commission has concerns that Google may be abusing its dominant position in the markets for web search, online search advertising and online search advertising intermediation in the European Economic Area (EEA). Google has made proposals to try to address the Commission's four competition concerns. In May 2012, Commissioner Almunia gave Google the opportunity to offer remedies to the complaints on dominant market position.

In March 2013, the Commission formally informed Google of its preliminary conclusion that four types of business practices by Google may violate EU antitrust rules prohibiting the abuse of a dominant position (Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – TFEU).

Therefore, in order to address these concerns, Google offers for a period of 5 years to label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that users can distinguish them from natural web search results, 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, 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. These commitments would cover the European Economic Area (EEA).