FTC To Recommend Antitrust Case Against Google

NeutronCowboy writes with news that a majority of top staff members from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have become convinced that Google "illegally used its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals." The FTC is now drafting a memo that recommends the U.S. government begin an antitrust case against Google. "The agency’s central focus is whether Google manipulates search results to favor its own products, and makes it harder for competitors and their products to appear prominently on a results page. ... The memo is still being edited and changes could be made, but these are mostly fine-tuning and will not alter the broad conclusions reached after an inquiry that began more than a year ago, said these people, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified. ... The FTC staff memo does not mean that the government will sue Google for antitrust violations. Next, the vote of three of the five FTC commissioners would be required. And each step is a further prod for Google to make concessions to reach a settlement before going to court. Last month, Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the FTC, said a final decision on whether to sue Google would be made before the end of this year.

Comments

REALLY!?!?

[trparky]

Wrong company jackasses! You should be going after Apple!!!!

I can save them a lot of trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

The agencyâ(TM)s central focus is whether Google manipulates search results to favor its own products, and makes it harder for competitors and their products to appear prominently on a results page.

If I go to Google and search for "web browser" the results are:

1. Wikipedia
2. Opera
3. Opera again
4. Mozilla
5. News for web browser
6. Chrome
7. Safari
8. Webopedia (of all things)
9. Maxthon
10. Flock
11. docs.python.org

Those bastards!

I do not like Bing

[3seas]

So blame Google for it...