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No Google Antitrust Decision Until After Summer Break [Report]

It’s looking like this Google antitrust thing won’t be resolved anytime soon in Europe. Reuters is reporting that EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia said that the European Commission can r...
No Google Antitrust Decision Until After Summer Break [Report]
Written by Chris Crum
  • It’s looking like this Google antitrust thing won’t be resolved anytime soon in Europe. Reuters is reporting that EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia said that the European Commission can reach an agreement after the summer break.

    “We can envisage this as a possible deadline,” he’s quoted as saying. As Reuters notes, the Commission is closed for summer break throughout most of August, so it sounds like we won’t be seeing any resolution before then.

    Several weeks ago, Almunia said Google had submitted its settlement proposal. The details of this have not been made public. At the time, Bloomberg reported:

    Google sent a “detailed proposal,” said Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for Almunia. He said he couldn’t anticipate if the offer was sufficient to allay antitrust concerns or whether it would be sent to rivals and customers for comments. If this market test is successful, the EU can make the commitments legally binding. Such a settlement would avoid possible fines against the Mountain View, California-based company.

    Google, of course, settled its antitrust issues in the U.S., ending a lengthy probe by the FTC, which found that Google’s search business was not anticompetitive. Google did make a couple voluntary concessions.

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