Europe Hints at Impatience in Settling Google Case BRUSSELS - The European Union's top antitrust regulator, Joaquín Almunia, said Friday that there were limits to how much longer his office would try to negotiate a settlement with Google over whether its Internet search engine favored the company's own Web offerings to the detriment of competitors. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News Joaquín Almunia, Europe's top antitrust regulator. Mr. Almunia, in a news conference, also said he could still issue formal charges, known as a statement of objections, against Google if the talks did "not give us the results we are looking for, the elimination of our concerns in this market." Formal talks between Google and Mr. Almunia have been under way since July, when Google agreed to start seeking a deal. The company is trying to settle the matter without having to pay fines or have tight restrictions placed on its online search and its highly lucrative advertising service. Google has insisted that any adjustments it makes to its search results are intended to give the consumer a better experience, and not to preserve its own market share. Without a settlement, Google would leave itself open to being fined as much as 10 percent of its annual worldwide revenue, which reached nearly $38 billion last year, and conform to any E.U. law it was found to violate before being allowed to appeal to the General Court of the European Union. Mr. Almunia said in May that he suspected that Google might have abused its dominance in Internet search by displaying links to its own services, like Google maps or images, when it answered a query, preferring them over those of competitors. Mr. Almunia also said at the time that Google included material in its own search results that was copied from competitors" Web sites, and he expressed concerns about the way the company conducted its advertising business, including how it delivered search ads on partner sites. Instead of proceeding with formal charges, Mr. Almunia offered Google a chance to reach an amicable solution. It was the most significant sign yet that E.U. regulators were seeking to avoid a battle that would drag out for a decade or more, as happened in previous cases involving two U.S. technology giants, Microsoft and Intel. But reaching more rapid settlements also poses challenges, as Mr. Almunia acknowledged Friday during a news conference in which the main topic was a decision giving the music giant Universal the green light to buy EMI. "On the one hand," Mr. Almunia said of the Google case, "the discussions are not easy from the technical point of view. But at the same time this process of negotiations and discussions that we have launched before the summer break, at the end June or beginning of July, cannot be unlimited. Still, drawing out the negotiations for a few more weeks or even months could play in Mr. Almunia's favor by aligning the timetable of the European investigation with an inquiry by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that began in June 2011, about six months after the Union began its inquiry. If the Europeans and the F.T.C. reached similar conclusions, that could make it harder for Google, or even its competitors like Microsoft, to contest the terms of any settlement. "If the United States and the E.U. are aligned, it is difficult for competitors to play one regulator against the other," said Emanuela Lecchi, a partner at the law firm Watson, Farley & Williams in London, who does not represent clients involved in the case. "Moreover, there would be a clear blueprint for the other regulators," she said, adding that it might also be "in Google's interest to ensure that all regulators are aligned." Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., said Wednesday at an antitrust conference in Washington that his agency intended to decide by the end of the year whether to bring legal action against Google for some of the same anti-competitive practices under examination in Europe. But Mr. Leibowitz declined to comment on whether the F.T.C. staff, which has been gathering evidence in the investigation, had made a recommendation to the five-person commission about whether to proceed with an enforcement action. "We have not decided as a commission what we're going to do, where we're going to go with respect to Google," he said. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing - we're weighing the evidence, we're thinking it through, in a collective, collaborative, bipartisan way. Edward Wyatt contributed reporting from Washington.