You might recall, Google was accused of discriminating against their competitors in search results by European regulators.
The European Commission confirmed today, Google has in fact responded to the antitrust concerns.
Google sent a proposal to European regulators addressing four major areas of concern laid out by the EU following an eighteen month investigation.
Apparently, Google favored its own search services over that of others, used online reviews from other sites without permission, and created contracts which blocked advertisers from moving their ads to rivals while also blocking rivals results from search.
The EU did not say whether the response Google formulated satisfied the investigation or helped them avoid penalty, but a spokesperson for the search giant said they would continue to work with the EU to resolve the problem.
Also of Google interest, executive chairman Eric Schmidt announced that CEO Larry Page is doing fine. You might remember, Schmidt told Google shareholders early last week that Page would be absent from several key events taking place over the next three weeks because he had lost his voice.
The message sparked some curiosity about what was really going on, and Page responded by sending an email to the Google staff reminding them that he was okay, and that he would continue his duties as CEO as usual.
So, that’s the news on Google. They are working to smooth things over with the EU investigators, and Larry Page continues to be “fine” despite missing several major events including the annual shareholders meeting, Google’s I/O conference, and supposedly, the upcoming quarterly financial analysis taking place later this month. We’ll keep you updated on any further developments with these stories.