FTC Expands Its Google Antitrust Investigations 137
New submitter smithz writes "Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is expanding its antitrust probe of Google Inc. to include scrutiny of its new Google+ social networking service. Google this week introduced changes to its search engine so that results feature photos, news and comments from Google+. The changes sparked a backlash from bloggers, privacy groups and competitors who said the inclusion of Google+ results unfairly promotes the company's products over other information on the Web. Before expanding the probe, FTC was already investigating Google for giving preference to its own services in search results and whether that practice violates antitrust laws. The agency is also examining whether the company is using its control of the Android mobile operating system to discourage smartphone makers from using rivals' applications. Google is facing similar investigations in Europe and South Korea."
Re:Completely unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
...Katy Perry, who has one of the most popular Facebook pages but doesn't appear in the Search Plus results because she doesn't have a Google+ account.
What's the compliant? You want the search results to display a link to her Google+ account that doesn't exist? You want her uncrawlable facebook page to come up in the search results? You want people who do have Google+ accounts not to have that page show up in the search results?
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It doesn't seem a big deal.
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Why is that an issue? You want her facebook page, search on facebook. You want her google+ page, search on google (which, by the way, will also get you to her facebook page if you want just by putting facebook in the query).
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Re:Completely unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, you've got to opt-in in this "Google promoting their own services" as it doesn't work this way for me, so no sell.
Without opting in, for katy+perry you get Katy Perry's official website as first result, no Google+ or Facebook, though it finds twitter and myspace among other results.
Searching katy+perry+facebook gives you facebook page as top result.
But what's funny, earching for katy+perry+google+plus gives peekyou.com as top result and plus.google.com as second, kinda like google demoting their own services.
Re:Completely unsurprising (Score:4, Interesting)
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On the first chart I found Hotmail only has a 20% plus share among the big email providers. Yahoo is the only one close to dominate with a little over 50% and I doubt that qualifies as a monopoly.
We are talking here about abuse of a monopoly position in search which I think Google has. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in email services.
As long as you dont have a monopoly position you can tie and promote your own products all you want. Microsoft might get in trouble if they aggressively promoted Bing or
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Google's US market share is 66%. You seem to draw a pretty large change in conclusions going from 50% to 66%.
Also, Facebook is aligned with Microsoft, which powers 30% of all internet searches (Bing + Yahoo). I hardly thing 66% is enough to harm users who have a 30% competitor as an alternative. The bolding is there to remind folks that anti-monopoly enforcement is only there to protect consumers, not to protect companies who are expected to be competing.
Apple's 82% share of tables and 76% share of the m
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I just did it and I see: wikipedia, KP's offical site, mtv, her twitter account, a fan site, an english newspaper with an article about her, a couple of pictures (not from G+) and some more news. The only thing related to Google is a couple of youtube videos...
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It's a big deal because Google is promoting her Google+ page, while not Facebook's. That's the whole issue.
Didn't you say she *doesn't* have a Google+ page?
Your argument is unclear - are you proposing that search engines are a public utility? Will the gubment take ownership? Who'll be footing the tax bill? Will this result in new legislation that gets applied to every search engine or index?
I'm guessing you live in a country that considers itself the boss of the world.
While you're lobbying for truth and justice - please prosecute Bing for not indexing my sites as fast as it indexes others - oh, and how about tha
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I don't know who this Katy Perry person is (relative of Rick Perry?), but I'm guessing that the majority of people who want to find her Facebook page search for it in Facebook, not in Google. I don't have a Facebook account, nor do I really care about anyone's Facebook pages, so I never bother to click on Google links to Facebook accounts when they do crop up; more often, I use Google to find Wikipedia entries and official web pages for people. I'm guessing most people select the tool that seems right for
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Good point! If you already know where to find the content you're seeking then Google is doing nothing wrong by omitting that result.
So what if Google shapes results to hide things it doesn't want its uses to see? What harm could that possibly do? It's not like North Korea or China.
If your Aunt Tilly thinks "the internet" is what can be found through a Google search that's her own
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I just checked and Katy Perry's facebook profile is indexable.
Well, I just checked Facebook's robots.txt and it says
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
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User-agent: Googlebot /ac.php /ae.php /album.php /ap.php /autologin.php /checkpoint/ /feeds/ /l.php /o.php /p.php /photo.php /photo_comments.php /photo_search.php /photos.php
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
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And if you think this is evil, then will you say
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Their advertising is their search engine. It's a hand in hand thing. And no cutting it would cause issues similar to Sony and Sony. SCEA doesn't have nearly the same policies as Sony-Ericsson. It's very hard to have a Mission Statement for a whole company when it's really 6 smaller companies.
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I don't get what people like you find so offensive about a FREE service advertising other parts of its FREE services. When you can CHOOSE to use any service you want.
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Their advertising as single company, their search engine as single company and rest of their services as single or other companies. That way the individual companies can concentrate on what they do and aren't tied to each other. Just like was suggested in Microsoft's case.
The difference is that Windows, Office, etc. all make money on their own, while Google's advertising revenue pays for everything else they do. There'd basically be no way for Google to be Google (in the sense most people think of them, i.e. "Google it") under such a breakup scheme.
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Precisely, what they should have done was prevented Google from buying doubleclick in the first place. Most of the rest of this stuff isn't a particularly big deal comparatively speaking. And as you imply there isn't really any way of cutting up Google's advertising business the way that one could with physical media or even TV/Radio advertising.
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I suspect that the problem is that Katy Perry's Facebook PageRank is significantly below that of her Wikipedia page, Twitter page, or website, since almost nobody links to a Facebook page when talking about a celebrity (outside of posting on Facebook). The Google+ page would show up when you have a Google+ account and are searching, because you might want to follow that person.
Twitter single-handedly shut down Google's Realtime Search in 2009, and Facebook refused to give Google access to Facebook data unle
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I stand corrected. A poster noted that Katy Perry's facebook page is indexable. I confirmed this by searching for it on Google, which found it.
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No, what would be FAIR would be for them to link to her Twitter and facebook account.
Oh wait, didnt Twitter and Facebook tell google to shove off? Oh yea. Sour grapes, anyone?
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This should be pretty easy for Google to fix.
We can look at the precedent set by the Microsoft antitrust case and use the same conclusions made there.
When you go to the Google search page, it can check for the google cookie, and if it doesn't see it, show a screen as such:
"Hello, we noticed you typed google.com into your browser. The courts have forced us to ask you if you are really really sure you meant to go to google.com when you typed google.com. Are you absolutely positively pinky-swear sure you did
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Note the URL of your link. It's a case of spammers complaing about Spamhaus.
It's sad Google has to hide some of its operations, but it'd be basically impossible to fight SEO lowlifes otherwise.
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Oh look its you the shill, and you're back under a new username. [slashdot.org]
We're on to you. People aren't oblivious to a search engine complaining that their competition does better than them, and this stuff's been debunked a million times.
One day when you get cancer, we'll all rejoice.
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Well no, Google being investigated for antitrust regulations was bound to happen the moment a Democrat was elected President. The real question is what precisely they decide to do about it. As has been mentioned, they can't break the company up, doing so would be nonsensical compared with breaking up a company that has a physical presence or exists in multiple markets making money.
They'll ultimately almost certainly be stuck with monitoring Google for some period of time and banning a small number of practi
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Bullshit. The President has a surprising amount of control over the bureaucracy. This is why you see differing priorities for government agencies under different Presidents. During the Bush administration there was little if any effort by the federal government to deal with these issues as under that administration it was believed that no business could grow too large and that there would always be benefits from mergers.
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You mean except that none of those things turns a profit and that it's the ad and search businesses that are where the potential violations that people care about are allegedly being committed. Splitting them up like that would be worse than doing nothing.
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1) Google is not only one who is doing the filter bubble around person (Search Tedtalks about subject) as does Microsoft and Yahoo and almost everyone else do same thing.
2) I made search "Kate Perry" and I got relevant pages in front page (I have instant search in use so I get only 10 results per page) like facebook entry. If you would know the filter bubble, you would know that it depends who, with what browser, with what computer and from where the search has done. Different people gets different results.
Re:Fascinating negative moderation (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wow, Slashdot sure is important! (Score:1)
I had no idea that Slashdot was such an important site that people are actually paid good money to troll the discussions on it.
He is owned by Microsoft, Apple, and RIAA/MPAA to name a few.
Why don't you add the Bilderbergers and the Illuminati to the mix?
------RM
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Pretty much everyone you can name in the Tech sector has had an account here. Its influence is waning, but yes, people do get paid to troll here. The guy that consistently posts pro-microsoft and mentions coyly that he works at a social media advertising company with several "large clients"? What do you think that might mean?
You severely underestimate the amount of money people are willing to throw at "social media advertising". People wanting this money have come up with paid posting as part of a whole por
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Re:Fascinating negative moderation (Score:4, Informative)
What "rivals' applications"? (Score:1)
I'm a bit baffled by this sentence: "whether the company is using its control of the Android mobile operating system to discourage smartphone makers from using rivals' applications."
What applications is being talked about here? I'm assuming with rivals means either MS/Apple, or maybe other search engines and e-mail hosting and so on, but none of that really makes sense. Don't they develop Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which includes said smartphone makers? Or is Google requiring cer
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I believe it refers to the restrictions that manufacturers have to agree to in order to be allowed to use the Marketplace. I'm not sure of all the specifics, but the phones have to comply to a set of conditions otherwise they aren't allowed to participate in the Marketplace.
I can't comment on the merit or lack thereof as I'm not really sure what precisely the issue there is. But I suspect it has to do with the defaults.
it's an outrage (Score:1)
Let's see, Microsoft has bing search, upcoming arm tablets with windows 8, azzhure cloud, a lock on nearly 100% of the home PC market, a java clone named .net, proprietary lock-in document formats that are mandated throughout the US government (and most businesses), and the government is looking at google?
Talk about incompetence. I guess the US is picking on the new kid because Microsoft sent them home crying after the abject failure of the Penfield / Kotar-Kelly solution to the Microsoft monopoly in the 20
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Microsoft is one of the companies that pressured the FTC (and EU) to start this investigation. In some cases they used shell companies instead of complaining directly.
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Easy to shut off... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is three clicks to turn off this functionality.
Seach settings, select to not use personalized search, and then save.
Much more clear to use (or not use) than any change that Facebook ever made.
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I don't see how. Google Tweet Deck [google.com] Both Apple and Google mobile markets show up in the search results. If twitter wasn't such a bitch about their site being crawled they would have updates on Google too. I can actually remember going to Google to use their realtime search because Twitter is such a shit site. But now twitter want's out of the realtime show on Google but they are saying it's unfair that Google has their own real time content providers. There are no "competitors" no companies want to tak
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They're still promoting their other services over competitors
There's nothing wrong with promoting your services over competitors' services.
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Just like it was easy to use Netscape instead of Internet Explorer, or switch to Linux from Windows 98.
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Sure, it was easy to switch to Linux from Win98.
Except you pretty much had to pay for Win98 and IE before installing Linux and Netscape, because MS taxed OEMs for any non-Windows machines.
Learn history, it's not something hidden [justice.gov].
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I think you forgot the biggest (first) step - creating a GMail account and logging in.
Interestingly, my brother-in-law just bought a new phone (I don't even know what the heck model it is, but it runs Android). It would not let him sync to his Facebook contacts, he was required to create a GMail account to use the phone. Didn't sound like opting out was possible.
Please also investigate the https change (Score:1)
When they started defaulting their logged in users to https, they also hid the referrer from the subsequent page. They say this was for security, but in reality, it was an antitrust action forcing people to either use google analytics or use pay per click. I would like to see that on the agenda as well.
Re:Please also investigate the https change (Score:4, Informative)
If a website is accessed from a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection and a link points to anywhere except another secure location, then the referrer field is not sent.
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Or they're using it to more definitively track the clicks out, even if people have Javascript disabled.
In fact, it has always surprised me that "trick" worked with their links precisely for that reason.
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Google (Score:2)
Needs to buy some of the same government people Microsoft has.
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What? Bying votes is illegal? Did Microsoft CEO get jail time because they bribed people to vote OOXML in ISO vote?
Oh... it was not government issue so go on....
Yet ANOTHER Government Agency (Score:2)
That's ridiculous. It seems like these days successful is synonymous with monopoly. What is anti-competitive, exactly, about having a feature that requires someone to sign up?
Re:Yet ANOTHER Government Agency (Score:4, Informative)
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Google doesn't need to buy government representatives--its executives already are the government representatives [cnn.com]. Eric Schmidt is a technology adviser to Obama, Google executive Sonal Shah led meetings on the transitory team, several ex-executives now work in the administration, and Marissa Meyer had Obama personally appear at her house during a fundraiser a week before the FTC dismissed its probe into the Street View scandal.
But yeah, let's blame it all on a Microsoft conspiracy.
do you even know what 'representative' means ? (Score:2)
google needed to buy representatives. meaning, congressmen or senators. none of these would happen. or sopa.
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That's ridiculous. It seems like these days successful is synonymous with monopoly. What is anti-competitive, exactly, about having a feature that requires someone to sign up?
Signed,
Every Microsoft supporter in 1998
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LOL the level of doublethink here is staggering!
FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to see the FTC members investigated for how many of them own Apple or Microsoft products or stock. These companies are desperate to destroy Google, who has done nothing wrong and is driving them out of business, and it wouldn't surprise me that they would stock the government with their fanboys and shills to accomplish this.
Nobody is forced to use Google products or services, they choose to do so because of Google's superiority and innovativeness. These charge are absolutely baseless and I look forward to Google being vindicated. Hopefully they file a countersuit afterwards for libel and harassment.
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For awhile I thought it was their cheeky attitude towards the uber patriotic SOPA and PIPA acts.
Remember that ex MAFIAA lawyers are now packing the DOJ.
Google shills (Score:1)
And people say there are Apple and Microsoft shills on Slashdot? That last paragraph reads like stock phrases from a marketing suit. "...Google's superiority and innovativeness...these charges are absolutely baseless and I look forward to Google being vindicated..." And it gets modded as Insightful!
I use Google products too, but come on. Google is huge, and if they're overstepping their bounds, they should be investigated just like Microsoft was a decade ago.
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For a headsup, the bonch [slashdot.org] account and Overly Critical Guy [slashdot.org] accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post [slashdot.org] and a previous post I've made here [slashdot.org] for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
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"Hopefully they file a countersuit afterwards for libel and harassment."
Google's motto is "Don't be Evil" and so on, Google would not do what you hope...
As when someone does mistake, it is a mistake. If someone is stupid or greed and sue you because that... it is still not right to sue back from it, but to work harder to be a better one.
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I guess it's alright that this place is so pro-Google and anti-Microsoft. At this rate, you're on pace to balance this out with your slew of anti-Google posts. What are you up to, 10 in this story alone?
Your advice to stop treating multi-billion dollar corporations as sports teams is something you should consider yourself. The fact of the matter is that corporations do have cultures of their own, which drive the employees and the corporation toward certain actions. Microsoft has a culture of corruption, a c
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Nobody was forced to use Internet Explorer either, but that led to an antitrust trial that Slashdot was pretty excited about at the time.
Are you serious?....
Have you already forgotten what it was like between years 1995-2005? You really needed to use IE if you wanted to get pages look and work correctly...
Or are you trying to rewrite the history by denying that ActiveX, MS own Java version, own implementations of HTML and so on didn't exist?
Situation what we have today (IE being almost below 50%) has not been existing at those times... Thanks to netscape opening a source code of Netscape to give final name of Firefox and then leading to this
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When Google search holds 95-98% of the search market or mobile and uses contracts under NDA to prohibit businesses from using other parties' products, come back and present that argument again.
Google doesn't have that kind of pull. Period. Yeah, I use Google, but I'm no fan of them or any sports teams.
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This is anti SOPA punishment. (Score:2, Troll)
This 'investigation' comes right at the time when sopa thing heated up, mai
What relevant laws are being broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
As I understand anti-trust laws, It can't just be because somebody happens to be dominant and they leverage that in another product. There has to be something where the consumer is practically speaking unable to choose because of said dominance.
Spin much? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the linked article:- Cecelia Prewett, an FTC spokeswoman, declined to comment on the widening of the agency’s investigation.
I interpret that to read "declined to comment on *claimed* widening of the agency's investigation.
I don't equate every investigation launched by the FTC as evidence of any wrongdoing - anymore than I equate a Department of Transport investigation into cars taking off from the lights all by themselves. They respond, by nature, to complaints. The complaints don't have to be valid.
Hint: automotive industry in trouble - find Fiat guilty (of not catering to fat feet). Rinse and repeat the next time the native automotive industry loses sales to a foreign competitor.
What should search results be? (Score:2)
Google offers many services that are very good, and are among the best available.
They SHOULD be high in the rankings.
Another "monopoly with 10 alternatives" (Score:1)
Normally I'd be totally with Google on this, but I believed they've whined about other "monopolies" where the monopoly only exists because people choose the product from among dozens of other alternatives. In other words a make believe monopoly.
So instead of backing google, I'll go with a Nelson Munz "ha ha".
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Google whined about Microsoft and Yahoo forming a "monopoly", which is risible because if anybody has a monopoly in that space (which they don't), it would be Google. They also whined about Internet explorer and Windows being bundled, when clearly there are dozens of alternative OS's and browsers available.
Back in my day a monopoly was real, you had one choice of a physically or legally limited resource. Nowadays apparently if there are 50 choices but one is so much better than the others that people over
"Personalize" Search (Score:2)
Personally I think this whole "Personalized Search" concept is stupid.
Why the hell would I want to search 1-2 paragraph posts by the unwashed masses (including my own) instead of proper ARTICLES posted to the internet? The whole concept is asinine.
What's next? Searching the insightful wisdom of 140 character tweets? *LOL*
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Separate branches in the same company should be separate entities and still have to pay their own way. (or, in other words, have their default finances "cut" to the amount the payment cost, possibly even lowering salaries if the branch isn't profitable enough. It is the only fair way. )
Yes, that would be... But think... Microsoft would not have entered to game console markets ever. Microsoft would not have ever entered to Search engine markets... Sony would not have ever developed PS3...
Youtube could be something different... Twitter, Facebook and other similar sites would never have existed...
And I like the idea... as big corporations and competition ain't good for customers