Being the dominant search engine for over a decade has seen Google face-off against many commissions for potential anti-competitiveness practices. If you're on top, this is bound to happen. Now though Google has agreed with a regulator ruling, that suggested it was a little covert about links that sent people to Google +.

The agreement is actually the lesser of two evils however, as Google will now avoid a costly court case and potential fine if it was found legally responsible. It has already endured a two year investigation into the matter, with companies like Microsoft and Trip Advisor complaining that Google search results were unfair. From now on, Google will need to make it more obvious if a search result links someone through to Google +.

At least DuckDuckGo is trying to do something a bit different.

The New York Times is also suggesting that Google might even have to display results from competitive search engines – though this seems anti-competitive on the part of the EU ruling body rather than Google.

KitGuru Says: Google isn't beyond making little manipulations to keep itself ahead, but the other search engine providers aren't going to catch up by trying to subdue Google, they'll do it by offering something better. You can't just throw money at the problem either as Microsoft showed us with its billions of investment.

Any of you guys got any good ideas of how other search engines could compete with Google?

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