Sources suggest new FTC antitrust focus on Google+
More grist for the regulatory mill
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may be expanding its antitrust investigations to include the increasing integration of Google+ into Mountain View‘s search engine business.
Additional probes into the links between Google and its fledgling social network are being ordered to assess to what - if any - level Mountain View is favoring its own services in the search engine market, two sources told Bloomberg. The FTC declined to comment on the matter.
“We believe that our improvements to search will benefit consumers,” Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Google, said in an statement - while declining to comment on any investigation. “The laws are designed to help consumers benefit from innovation, not to help competitors.”
On Tuesday Google announced it was integrating Google+ and other public social media data into its search results, with its “Search plus your World” initiative. The move sparked debate after a complaint from Twitter that Google was "damaging to the internet" and led to calls from the Electronic Privacy Information Center for the FTC to intervene.
The FTC is already looking into Google ranking systems to see if there is any favoritism going on in the results, and has reportedly widened the initial investigation to include the effect of Android on the mobile operating system market.
Mountain View is facing a regulatory barrage from Congress at the moment; the company is under intense scrutiny on antitrust issues, and seems to be on the losing side of a battle over legislation like Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). As El Reg has pointed out, Google has a rough road ahead, and it seems likely that the pressure isn’t going to let up any time soon. ®
COMMENTS
WTF
"It is not the role of government to meddle in private voluntary interactions." Government cannot exist without meddling in private interactions, so yes that is it's role or maybe you haven't noticed things like sales taxes, seatbelt laws, the war on some drugs, the war on some light bulbs etc.
Government is a monopoly of force for the benefit of some at the expense of others. Don't like it? Start your own revolution. Though you will probably need to get violent about it.
Someone hasn't paid enough campaign contributions yet.
It's election year, ya know?
Things are getting bad for Google
The whole Mocality debacle is not going to help them.
http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/
Google's response:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ#115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ
Clearly legit, the Google statement was made by a VP -
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nelson-mattos/4/703/430
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