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FTC Expands Its Google Antitrust Investigations
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."
...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?
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 certain applications not to be shipped on their phones as a requirement for licensing the Google apps? Does that even matter as long as end-users can install whatever they want on their phones anyway? I don't see Apple or MS offering google apps on their phones.
I guess I'm missing something, I can't really make sense of that statement. Can someone enlighten me?
I just checked and Katy Perry's facebook profile is indexable. In fact you can find it if you write "katy perry facebook", but it's nowhere to find if you just search for her name.
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 200X's. What an embarrassing fail this government is.
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.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
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.
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.
Microsoft paid a lot of money to get their lawyers into the FTC and the DOJ. It would be passing strange for these to not go after Google. It doesn't matter, because they still have to operate within the law.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Probably because those searching for "Katy Perry" on Google are not looking for her facebook profile and never click on it. I mean, If I'm a facebook registered user and I'm looking for her facebook profile, I'd search Katy Perry on facebook, not on Google; and if I'm not a facebook user I can't see the point of searching for her facebook profile...
It doesn't seem a big deal.
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.
It's a big deal because Google is promoting her Google+ page, while not Facebook's. That's the whole issue.
Needs to buy some of the same government people Microsoft has.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Still their other services like YouTube and Google Places should be broken up to separate companies. Then Google would have no incentive to promote their other products in search results over other companies. Search engine + advertising could probably work together, rest of the services should be separate.
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 practices. Ultimately it's not likely to change much and that's assuming that the agencies decide to move forward with enforcement which they might not.
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.
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?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
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).
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.
Because it's Google promoting their own services over competitors and in some cases leveraging their monopoly position to illegally enter other markets. That warrants FTC investigation and sanctions.
It's not a D or R thing. The fix was in on both sides. That's how they do it these days, and it's how they'll do it next time too. Redundancy: It's not just for servers, storage and networking any more.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What? She's got no G+ page, search "Katy Perry" on Google and tell me what you see.
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...
by using your logic, MS should be investigated too, they are pushing IE9, Windows, etc on their Hotmail page, and nobody complains. And Hotmail still is a dominant force. Twitter said NO for using their data on Google. Facebook data is not open for Google. So, how do you expect Google Search+ to use others data? And all that illegaly enter other markets BS is just FUD. You should inform yourself before commenting.
Bonch and his puppet accounts are well known for posting pre-typed pro Apple or anti-Google as first posts. There are a couple of similar Microsoft shill acounts that are almost certainly paid astroturfers. Bonch and the others may or may not be paid. They get modded down regardless of content.
The fix was in during the Bush presidency too. How do you think the antitrust investigation got shut down? Then as now the money went to both sides to ensure that no matter who won, they got their way. It's not a D or R thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If Google doesn't own the other services they have no incentive to promote them over competitors. Those services like YouTube can handle advertising and traffic building on their own. The issues people have with Google search results would go away if the company would be split up.
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.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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 Hotmail through their Windows OS monopoly though that monopoly is in decline with the rise of smartphones and tablets.
@de_machina
Oh look its you the shill, and you're back under a new username.
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.
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 music player market must really bother you, right?
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
yep Smithz also
Looks to me like you are heavily invested in seeing Google destroyed. You put quite a bit of thought into it. I wonder what your motivations are. How are you linked to Microsoft?
Really - ALL of the alleged accusations are practiced daily by other technology companies which have major shares - like ms, apple. Especially apple is almost fascist compared to what others can do with their handsets, including anyone using their software. microsoft even as of now pushes ie9, hotmail, msn through windows. they are even wanting to 'kill' ie6 - it does not matter whether you want it or not, for good or bad measure.
...
This 'investigation' comes right at the time when sopa thing heated up, mainly because of google's participation and open anti-sopa advocacy. a major force - imagine if google went 'dark' and educated users for one day about sopa. there would not be anything left in the name of sopa after that day
so this is a preemptive strike. they are basically launching an investigation, to scare/caution google, so they wont be so vocal about this sopa shit. if they comply, its going to die out. if they dont, the investigation will find that they are doing anti competitive practices and penalize them. everything was fine when google was cooperating with the current administration for realizing their 'technological vision'
corporate bastardry and big media money in action. nothing else.
Read radical news here
representative means congressmen. senators. these make the laws. and no, advisors dont mean shit - whatever the leashholder pays for, is legislated.
google needed to buy representatives. meaning, congressmen or senators. none of these would happen. or sopa.
Read radical news here
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?
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: /
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Some companies are paying people to astroturf. Some people with mod points are modbombing them. Astroturfing (And other forms of advertising or trolling) are most effective when they are mostly or even entirely true, just omitting the facts that don't support the desired conclusion. For example, pointing out the correlation between skin colour and conviction rate in the USA leads the reader to one conclusion, while pointing out the correlation between police search rate and skin colour or skin colour and economic class paints an almost inverted one. When presented with a post of the first category, you can either reply with one of the other points, or just moderate it as a troll. The second is easier and, if the poster persists in this behaviour, probably more deserved.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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 the job: Facebook for searching Facebook, and Google for searching the web in general.
If enough people think that way, and if Google's rankings are based in part on user behavior, Facebook isn't going to rank high for Katy Parry, but Wikipedia and any campaign (candidate's daughter/spouse?) or official web page should.
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.
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 didn't mean to reach one of these other search engines when you typed google.com?"
(Insert list of links to other search engines)
According to the results of the Microsoft anti-trust case, this would put them in full compliance once again.
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 fault! It's not like very many people think that way.
People have to take responsibility for knowing what's out there! Depending on Google for searching "the internet" is just plain ignorant and lazy!
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 that Facebook search index? Twitter put up those nofollow tags... Can you whinge for me because I'm forced to use Google and it's not fair!
Even so, how does Google know that the current user is (a) a facebook user and (b) has Katy Perry as one of his/her friends. Facebook doesn't share that information with Google. Facebook wants a walled garden vs giving users what they want. Google now knows who is in your circles and can give you better results as such for the entire internet as well as your circle of friends. Already there are bloggers who have written about how useful the new search is.
And if you think this is evil, then will you say the same when Facebook does the same thing? When Microsoft does the same thing? Facebook is going public and you can be sure they will expand into general search, what do you think they'll do with all the information they have on their users? Especially given the low margins of facebook advertising compared to search advertising, it's only a matter of time until Facebook gets into search and leverages their social data. If anything, Google is guilty of pioneering this new way of searching. Users want this. They wanted Google providing search results using Twitter data then Twitter refused to share data with Google, so Google created their own network to give users what they want. I don't see a problem here.
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.
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
Google offers many services that are very good, and are among the best available.
They SHOULD be high in the rankings.
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:
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Disallow:
Disallow:
You kind of answered your own question. If you want wikipedia entries, why don't you go right to wikipedia? The answer is, because it is nice to have google as a sort of commandline search that you can get all of the other places information exists about your query. The question and trouble is that facebook came up in search results before google+ and now it doesn't. Seems like a thing to investigate.
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".
Break it up into separate companies all you want, they would still all be owned by the same people. Line employees would know that YouTube is a "partner" and favor them, even if they were told not to. Solves nothing, the same way the AT&T breakup did. Oh, I can get my phone service from a smaller monopoly now. Gee, thanks.
The price they charge doesn't matter. Anti competitive is anti competitive no matter what the price.
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. Even a researched can get totally different results with dozens of friends than what millions of other people gets.
I am all the way for finding a controversial information about subjects. As I do not want to be blinded by my own believes. But it is very difficult thing to do, as wikipedia proofs, people don't care facts, they care only that what most people believe they know. Was topic about technology (mathematics), biology or chemistery.... it does not matter if someone has something different and is it true, as if just public opinion is that it is wrong... it is enough.
I don't mind if I get to Google search results a information about what my friends have done and shared with me or made public, as long as I can turn that off. (My personal opinion is, that should be by default off). But it is just great, as Google is primarily a search corporation, secondly a advertiser. And if people can find related data from google front page without checking googles other services where is same search bad... it is OK.
It is just stupid from Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and others who were offered to include their users public data on Google to deny from that as then Google had no one else to include than own service.
When google went around the town and asked "Do you want to include your customers data to our search" and they say "No". And after the round only one who wanted was Google itself. Others can not blame than itself from being stupid and greed.
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
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 unless Google essentially handed over the control of any type of social search to Facebook. Google wanted to index both of them. They didn't have any big desire to show up in results. Remember that.
Put identity in the browser.
You are free to use Bing if you want.
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*
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.