The US Federal Trade Commission is looking to take anti-trust action against Google, because there is belief that Google has abused its dominance of the search business.
The FTC is nearing a decision after 16 month of long investigation into Google’s search and advertising businesses, and sources say things are not looking good for the Mountain View–based company. The final decision will probably arrive next November or, at least, December.
Reuters reports that four of the five FTC commissioners are “convinced” that “Big G” abused its dominant position in the web search market to stifle its competition. Only one
commissioner remains “skeptical”.
For its part, Google, with its Chairman Eric Shmidt, has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
More specifically, The FTC is investigating on how Google act in the online travel industry, where it seems to be done that Google damaged competitors as Nextag or Yalp, positioning them in a bad quality ranking.
If the FTC will confirm that “Big G” has abused its market position, the search giant will be left with only two real choices: it can strive to reach a settlement, as it did with the European Commission, or it can prepare itself for a long and contentious legal battle.
Either option is sure to be costly.
We remind that a similar investigation was launched by the European Commission in 2010.
back to Europe, the attention seems to be focused on privacy.
European privacy regulators have found flaws in Google’s revised privacy policy, which may breach EU data protection laws.
A majority of the European data and privacy regulators have signed and sent a joint letter to the California-based search giant asking the firm to make changes to its revised policy. 24 of the 27 member states’ data protection regulators signed the letter, with the exception of Greece, Romania and Lithuania.
The regulators have asked Google to explain the firm’s intentions and detail methods for sharing user data across its services. The letter also said that Google must seek “explicit consent” when combining users’ data together.
We will back soon on this “delicate” issue.