Google has been handed a clear message from Brussels that will see the search giant have to modify the way it presents its results because it unfairly promotes links to its own services above those of third party companies.

Just last week, US regulators, the US Federal Trade Commission, ruled that Google was not doing anything wrong.

This was mooted as “weak” and “unusual” by competitors like Microsoft, and they called for Europe to take a harsher stance.

And that’s just what the European Union’s competition chief, Joaquin Almunia decided is necessary:

We are still investigating, but my conviction is [Google is] diverting traffic.

They are monetising this kind of business, the strong position they have in the general search market…This is not only a dominant position, I think – I fear – there is an abuse of this dominant position.

The French have already taken the stance of wanting to charge Google and other search engines for indexing searches. French President Francois Hollande and others have a good point: why should Google and other search engines enjoy advertising revenue generated from indexed searches such as news items, but not have to pay for indexing the original content.

Hollande met Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt last year to discuss the matter, and told French regional press that he would back legislation for a search levy as soon as this month at the time.

Schmidt also met with the judge shortly before Christmas and was given a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolve the issue.

One solution to the problem that has been speculated upon is that Google might have to clearly indicate links to its own services where they have been forcibly manipulated to appear higher in search rankings.

[Source: Guardian]