By MICHAEL LIEDTKE and GABRIELE STEINHAUSER
AP Business Writers
BRUSSELS – European regulators are tackling a puzzle that could shift the balance of power on the Internet: Is Google stifling competition by juicing its search results to favor its services over its rivals?
Hoping to find an answer, regulators announced an investigation Tuesday that will take the first major look into the heart of Google Inc., focusing on the very thing that corporations from Coca-Cola to KFC go to enormous lengths to keep secret.
In Google’s case, the mathematical formulas that determine its search engine’s prized recommendations.