Brussels Blog

Google’s three year tussle with Brussels over its search business is almost over. Our report today outlines the substance of its pre-charge settlement with the European Commission. Once formally adopted, it will allow Google to avoid a fine, any admission of guilt and a lengthy legal battle. But the price is accepting legally binding restrictions on how it can present its search results. Google has never yielded ground to a regulator on its prized core business before.

Given the space confines, we didn’t lay out all the details of the pact in the news piece. Some of it, as will become clear, is highly technical and not ideal weekend reading. For specialists we thought it would be useful to run through the full settlement taking each of the Commissions four concerns in turn:

THE SEARCH BUSINESS:

The concern: The Commission investigators provisionally concluded that Google was potentially diverting traffic to its own specialist, or vertical search services — like Google’s finance, news, shopping and weather sites — potentially to the detriment of consumers. Brussels alleged it 1) did not to inform users clearly when it was favouring its own in-houses services and 2) did not give proper visibility to rival search engines that may provide more relevant results.

The solution: As a principle Google promises to ensure its own in-house services are clearly labelled and demarcated from the general search results. Users should be “clearly aware” they are Google in-house services, not natural search results. Read more

Hollande made clear his Syria position had hardened in his remarks heading into the summit

Will a debate on Syria hijack this seemingly uneventful EU summit? That is certainly the Anglo-French plan. Foreign ministers discussed it only a fortnight ago and there was no mention of Syria on today’s formal summit agenda. But Paris and London have nevertheless decided to bounce their counterparts into a potentially fraught review of the sanctions regime.

Although Britain has been pushing the line for weeks, it France’s president François Hollande who fired the opening shot at the summit, making clear his position had hardened. The message: it is time to change the sanctions regime to allow Paris and London to arm Syrian rebels fighting the the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Read more

Malta's Joseph Muscat arrives at the EU summit

Finally the Socialists are talking. Most of the early arrivals to the pre-summit gathering of the Party of European Socialist in Brussels said next to nothing. The only statement from Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was a striking neon apricot jacket. Joaquin Almunia, the EU competition commissioner and former Socialist candidate for Spanish prime minister, just gave a “buenos Dias” to the throng of journalists.

So it was with some relief that the newly elected Joseph Muscat of Malta broke the silence with a call for “common sense” on economic policy. On the day to his first summit, he said the magic balance was ensuring that “good economic governance” does not “stifle growth”. It is hardly controversial. But the tone and indeed the arrival of a newly elected socialist gives a small taste of the shifting political mood in parts of Europe. Read more

France’s François Hollande is expected to attend the pre-summit meeting with centre-left leaders

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