Google Inc. and the European Union reach an agreement about search row

Google Inc. announced that its three-year antitrust battle with the European Union is to come to an end with an agreement. The company and the European Union reached the accord after Brussels accepted Googles latest offer to give its competitors more distinction in search results.

After more than two years of negotiations and three separate agreement proposals, the European Commission finally approved the terms on how the search page is presented by Google. The competitors of the company reviewed the earlier offers and described them as inadequate and “worse than nothing”. As reported by the Financial Times, the latest revisions still leave the terms in question unchanged in their major part, but Google is required to provide more space and visibility to mandatory links to alternative search services.

The agreement is seen by both the company and the European Commission as the final part of the long-awaited settlement talks, which were reported to be on the verge of crash at different points. There were even threats of formal changes in case the offer of Google Inc. was not improved.

The European Commission made a statement, which was cited by Bloomberg: “In its proposal, Google has now accepted to guarantee that whenever it promotes its own specialised search services on its web page (eg for products, hotels, restaurants, etc), the services of three rivals, selected through an objective method, will also be displayed in a way that is clearly visible to users and comparable to the way in which Google displays its own services. This principle will apply not only for existing specialised search services, but also to changes in the presentation of those services and for future services.”

Kent Walker, Senior Vice-President and General Counsel of Google Inc., said in an official statement, cited by the Financial Times: “We will be making significant changes to the way Google operates in Europe. We have been working with the European Commission to address issues they raised and look forward to resolving this matter.”

The agreement remains to be finally approved. It is said not to include a formal “market test” of the third offer.

Google Inc. rose by 0.42% on Tuesday to settle the session at $1 138.16, raising its one-year change to 49.95% on the upside. The 41 analysts offering 12-month price targets for CNNMoney have a median target of $1 313 with a high estimate of $1 450 and a low estimate of $964. The median estimate represents a 15.36% increase from the latest closing price.