Google offers to promote rivals’ services to appease EU antitrust officials

Google may wind up settling with antitrust officials in the European Union but it likely won’t get away virtually scot-free like it did in the United States. The Associated Press reports that Google is offering some more concessions to European antitrust regulators, including an agreement to “display links to three rival specialized search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users.” In other words, whenever Google shows sponsored search results for its own services, it must also display links to rivals’ services nearby. Previously, Google had agreed to clearly label its own services in searches as sponsored results in an attempt to satisfy critics who claimed that the company is pushing down rivals’ products to promote its own.