Google under investigation
by James Jarrett | 25.04.2013
Has Google been unfairly promoting themselves online? Certain EU regulators seem to think so, and in light of an investigation, Google have today agreed to alter their search results.
The EU regulators are pushing for a number of concessions to be tested for a month with a view to them sticking legally for 5 years if accepted by the European Commission. These concessions include:
- Clearly labelling results from YouTube, Google Maps and its other sites
- Clearly separating Google’s promoted links from other search results
- Displaying links to 3 specialized rivals “close to its own services in a place that is clearly visible to users”
The main objective of these concessions are ultimately to allow more competitors to the dominant Google, although some argue Yahoo and Bing already represent good alternatives.
Further concessions being offered by Google themselves are:
- to offer websites “opt out” options from all their content in Google search services, whilst keeping their ranking in general results
- to offer specialized search sites that focus on product or local search
- no obligation for users to source online search advertisement exclusively from Google
- they will no longer restrict advertisers from running search campaigns across rival platforms
