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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They haven'y bought government representatives like their competition (nor should they have to). I think they should move their company headquarters to Canada. It would make an excellent statement about the SOPA and other restrictions coming, as well as the state of the patent system in the US.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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
It's part of the recommended practice for HTTPS to HTTP because sites using HTTPS may put sensitive information (such as a session id) in the URL and you don't want this leaking. The browser does this, not Google - it simply omits the referrer header. DuckDuckGo has had an option to bounce via a redirect with a bland name if you visit an HTTPS site, and apparently Google will now do that too. This means that the site doesn't get your search string. Google may also put some other information in the URL (last time I typed anything into Google, the search URL was about 400 characters long, so I'm not sure what was in there) and if you care about your privacy then you may consider this to be a good thing. I turn it off because I'm not quite that paranoid, and because I find the slight delay as you go via the redirect to be more irritating than letting sites know what my search string was.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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 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.