Brussels, 25/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - It looks as though an out-of-court settlement is on the cards between Google and the European Commission in the dispute about allegations of abuse of the US giant's dominant position in the search engine market, hinted EU Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia at a press conference on Wednesday 25 July. He said that following telephone conversations with Google, the company had provided the Commission with sufficient explanations for technical meetings to be arranged to examine the option of a deal under Article 9 of the EU Treaty. The Commission will now examine the technical proposals put forward by Google to see whether they are satisfactory. The commissioner did not rule out Commission investigations into other aspects of Google's business over the next few months. In May this year, the Commission sent Google a warning letter after receiving a number of complaints from competitors about Google annoyingly displaying at the top of the screen links to its own specialist search engines, with competitors' links only listed down below; copying the content of competing specialist search engines (reproducing their search results without authorisation); exclusive clauses between Google and its advertisers; and restrictions on the portability of advertising campaigns between AdWords and other platforms. (FG/transl.fl)