THREE years after the European Commission started to examine whether Google had abused its dominant position in online search, it seems that the company has reached an agreement with the regulator. The Financial Timesreports the terms of a draft agreement between Google and the commission. A settlement would mean that Google avoids formal charges (a “statement of objections” in euro-speak) and the sort of heavy fines levied several years ago on Microsoft, now one of its chief antagonists in its recent antitrust battles on both sides of the Atlantic. In May 2012 Joaquín Almunia, the European Union’s competition commissioner, laid out four areas of concern about Google, which accounts for more than 90% of searches in Europe. The first was that Google favoured its own specialised search services (for restaurants or flights, say) ahead of others. The second was that it may have been copying (or “scraping”) content, such as reviews, from competitors. The third was exclusive agreements between Google and other website-owners, under which Google served up the advertisements that appeared after searches on those sites. The fourth was that advertisers could not easily transfer campaigns from Google to rivals.

It appears that the agreement will address the first problem chiefly through clearer labelling of its in-house searches and by giving prominent links to competing services. On scraping, rivals will be able to opt out of Google’s specialist services, without disappearing from the main search engine. Exclusive agreements for embedded search will go. And smaller advertisers should find it easier to move their campaigns.

All this brings to search something of the flavour of utility regulation. Google is a little like the owner of an electricity distribution grid (its search engine) that also owns power stations that compete with other generators (specialised services). It is, in effect, promising not to favour its power stations over its competitors’; and the commission seems to think it has found a satisfactory way of preventing and monitoring bias.

The result will be that Google’s pages will look different to Europeans from the way they do now—and different from the pages that Americans see. The Federal Trade Commission, which concluded a separate investigation into Google in January, settled on much milder terms. Even so, those who have been urging the commission to take an even harder line (not only Microsoft, but also Expedia and Tripadvisor, two travel sites, Foundem, a shopping search engine, German newspaper publishers and others) will be disappointed.

Google’s antitrust woes may not be over yet, and not only because its enemies and the commission will be watching closely to see whether it keeps its promises. Just as computing is moving to mobile devices, so is the regulatory battle. This week it emerged that Microsoft and others had asked the commissioner to look at the dominance of Android, Google’s mobile operating system. In the IT industry the work of antitrust lawyers and watchdogs is never done.