EU says Google concessions in antitrust case not acceptable
Google's revised proposals to settle an antitrust case are not acceptable, European Union competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Friday. — “The latest offer as submitted by Google in October …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third turn in a two-year negotiation. Google faced the threat of formal EU antitrust proceedings back in September 2012, submitted its first settlement terms to Brussels in April 2013, and was told in May that regulators would seek more concessions. By December 13, the Wall Street Journal reported Google's hopes of a deal had already suffered a blow.
What changed on December 20 is that Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia put his name to the rejection: Google's revised October offer, which would have required changes to how the company displays rival services in search results, is 'not acceptable.' The story travelled unusually widely for a procedural step — picked up same-day by the Associated Press, Forbes, ZDNet, Gigaom and The Verge — reflecting how much of the search market's competitive structure hangs on whether this ends in a negotiated remedy or a charge sheet.
First-order effects
- Google must return to the table yet again — its third attempt since April 2013 — or accept that Almunia will escalate from negotiation toward formal proceedings against its search practices.
- The companies whose complaints triggered the probe gain leverage: each rejection signals Brussels is holding out for remedies stronger than Google's voluntary commitments.
Second-order effects
- A collapsed settlement would shift the battleground from closed-door bargaining to public infringement findings, raising both the reputational cost of the case and the scope of any eventual remedy beyond display tweaks.
- Rival vertical search and comparison-shopping services get a longer window in which regulatory pressure constrains Google's ability to entrench its own results over theirs.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — repeated offers, repeated rejections — it points toward the European Commission hardening its playbook for dominant platforms generally: settlements extracted on the Commission's terms rather than the incumbent's, with formal proceedings as the credible fallback.
The trend: Brussels is shifting its approach to Google from negotiated concession-extraction toward a harder enforcement posture, testing whether dominant platforms can buy peace with self-regulatory commitments.