Brussels, 30/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - An out-of-court settlement between the European Commission and Google might be on the cards over the next few weeks, according to a European official quoted by Reuters. The web giant has reportedly submitted much better proposals than the ones a month ago that Competition Commissioner Almunia said were not acceptable. The European Commission accuses Google of abusing its dominant position by putting its own specialist search engines first in search lists (Google Shopping, Google Maps, Google News, etc.) and reproducing without authorisation information from competing services (like hotel and restaurant information, products and so on), also solely advertising related products and contractually banning developers from developing tools to allow advertising campaigns to be conducted also on sites competing with Google's AdWords. An out-of-court settlement would save Google a fine of up to €5 billion. (FG/transl.fl)