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Google: We did a 'pretty good job' of addressing EU search concerns

Search giant says it's done a 'pretty good job' of addressing the European Commission's concerns

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Google has defended its proposals submitted to the European Commission (EC) for fairer search results, saying it did a "pretty good job", two days ahead of the deadline to the feedback process offered to rivals.

In April the search giant submitted its own suggestions to make search results fairer for rivals and content owners at the request of the EC, following concerns that Google holds a 90 percent share of the European search market.

Google made four key proposals, including visual separation of its own products such as Maps and Shopping, and featuring rival equivalent services in search results. In addition, they proposed dropping clauses in advertising contracts that kept advertisers from using other platforms.

A post on Google's Europe blog insisted its proposals were "meaningful and comprehensive". It continued: "We know that scrutiny comes along with success, and we have worked hard to answer their questions thoroughly and thoughtfully," said the post, written by senior vice president Kent Walker.

"As we've always said, we build Google for users, not websites. And we don't want to hamper the very innovations that people like best about Google's services. That's why we focused on addressing the Commission's specific concerns, and we think we did a pretty good job.

"We very much appreciate the Commission's professionalism and integrity throughout this process, and look forward to reaching a sensible solution," it concluded.

In March, a group of senior executives of services including Expedia, TripAdvisor and Streetmap sent an open letter to the EC expressing concern over Google's "systematic demotion or exclusion" of rivals' products.

Regulatory lawyers told V3 in April that Google's proposals were sensible in order to avoid potentially "multi-billion dollar fines". The feedback process, open to companies such as Microsoft and Nokia, ends on Thursday after being extended by the EC.

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