EU anti-trust row: Google offers to treat rivals equally via auction

Google offers to treat rivals equally with shopping-ad slots

Google has offered to display rival comparison shopping sites via an auction, as it aims to stave off further EU antitrust fines, four people familiar with the matter said.

Google is under pressure to come up with a big initiative to level the playing field in comparison shopping, but its proposal was roundly criticised by competitors as inadequate, the sources said.

EU enforcers see the antitrust case as a benchmark for investigations of other areas dominated by the U.S. search giant, such as travel and online mapping.

Google has already been fined a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.9 bln) by the European Commission for