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Google, FTC Settle Antitrust Case
itwbennett writes "According to an ITworld report, 'Google has agreed to change some of its business practices, including allowing competitors access to some standardized technologies, to resolve a U.S. Federal Trade Commission antitrust complaint against the company.' This includes 'allow[ing] competitors access to standards-essential patents the company acquired along with its purchase of Motorola Mobility.' Also among the business practices Google has agreed to stop is 'scraping Web content from rivals and allegedly passing it off as its own, said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.'" SlashCloud has some more details, including links to the agreement itself and Google's soft-pedaling description of "voluntary product changes."
How many billions did Google spend on Motorola?
'scraping Web content from rivals and allegedly passing it off as its own'
uhh looks like their search engine business is over? i mean really, people go to google first before their rivals.
So, would there be a problem if Google scraped Web content from rivals and proudly proclaimed it was passing it off as its own?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It should be against the law to settle anti-trust cases. They should all go to court.
You think Google lost here? The FTC has been trying for half a decade to bring an anti-trust case against Google, and at the end of it Google has agreed (not even been ordered) to change a few business practices. Google won. And quite frankly, the fact that this is the best the FTC could do against them would indicate that the FTC simply didn't have a case.
Do you seriously think this is anything but smoke and mirrors? Google has deep ties with the NSA and other government agencies and Schmidt will supposedly be part of the current administration.
Google essentially won here, and that's exactly how it should be. The government has no place telling Google what it can and cannot do on its own website - they're guaranteed freedom of speech, and Google.com is the outlet for that speech. They have every right to order search results however the hell they want to, and it's good to see that the feds didn't decide otherwise.
The other concessions have a bit more basis in reality, but it's bullshit that Motorola can't seek injunctions for technology that made mobile phones possible while asshole companies like Apple and MS can seek injunctions for rounded corners.
Scraped content is against Google' s own webmaster guidelines, where were they passing it off as their own?
All Google agreed was that the patents it holds which are essential to the implementation of certain mobile-telephony standards will be licensed under FRAND terms. They didn't agree to let them be used for free or anything.
Why weren't those already the terms? Standards bodies are supposed to, if they're doing their job, approve standards with some kind of FRAND licensing condition, in order for the standards to actually function as standards. The point of a standard is that everyone making a device with a certain kind of functionality is supposed to conform to certain agreed ("standard") behavior. To do that, they have to be able to legally able to implement the standard, which means any patents essential to the implementation need to be generally available to any third party for licensing, on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Agreed...this is a win for google: U.S. antitrust regulators added that they have found no evidence to claims that Google unfairly favors its own services in search results.
You think Google lost here?
The only reason they completely overpaid for Motorola Mobility was for their patent portfolio. You could argue they have lost $12.5 billion.
You mean how Google is required by law to comply when ordered by a judge or that Google is one of the few corps that actively try to not only notify the end user that the government is requesting data on them, but Google has actually used its own time and money to fight judges who attempted to seal requests, keeping Google from notifying the end user of such requests.
Yeah, bad bad Google. Not to say they're flawless, but they're not conspiring.
My Grammar teacher would have killed me for that run-on.
Wrong gambit.
MS/Apple/Oracle/Rockstar/Fairsearch's gambit just failed with this settlement.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130103/10491421570/as-expected-ftc-announces-close-google-investigation-with-no-antitrust-charges-minor-tweaks-to-biz-practices.shtml
There is more funny version of this on readwrite (dot) com. Sounds like Microsoft was very involved in this.
Well, "bought for patent portfolio" is right, but it's two pronged. Part of Google's reason to buy them was Moto basically threatening to sue every Android manufacturer out there.
It's not clear how it would turn out if it was Moto going after smaller OEMs and not Google going after MS and Apple.
This is a political statement, the politicians look like they're doing something, Google appears to have been reprimanded, but in reality, no change was made. The patents are already and have been under FRAND. The real FRAND, not the Apple definition ("F stands for Free!")
at the end of it Google has agreed (not even been ordered) to change a few business practices.
Who cares whether they have agreed to do it or been ordered to do it? The result is the same, it gets done.
You mean the cost of doing business. It is even better when it works both ways for you and your competitors. Or lack there of.
This is why the entire market of any kind of goods, physical, intellectual or otherwise needs to be completely deregulated, no more of this fuckin monopoly crap. Should be enforced with guns IMO right back at the assholes. Let anyone on the planet sell and provide whatever god-damned services they want. Fair is fair. Just is just. Its that fuckin simple, anything otherwise is just brainwashing and fear mongering and the elite 1% wanting to hold onto absolutely everything they have, which is more then you could even hope to imagine.
What happened to your main account bonch?
Did it get it get modded down into oblivion for your hilariously pathetic anti-Google tirades?
How many other alts are you posting with today? Never mind, they are easy to spot...
So you're basically saying that Google didn't lose now, because they already lost by having to pay for Motorola. Now, they simply aren't losing even more.
Granted, this isn't a big win for the FTC either. In fact, it looks like the only winner is whoever got the money from the Motorola sale.
"regarding the specific allegations that the company biased its search results to hurt competition, the evidence collected to date did not justify legal action by the Commission .. The evidence did not demonstrate that Google's actions in this area stifled competition in violation of U.S. law".
AccountKiller
The limitations in the no-injunction rule are fairly narrow; they don't prevent Google from getting license revenue, and they don't prevent Google from seeking injunctions if the other party doesn't agree to a specific set of commitments regarding actually paying FRAND licensing fees once they are settled. And they only apply to standards-essential patents. So, there's still quite a bit of value in the Motorola patent portfolio.
I can "haz" money then? meowww
Scam spam = ban
It might have been, if they did that, but the FTC investigated that claim and didn't find support for it, saying:
Google is required by the Consent Order to make a very specific offer regarding FRAND licensing (to the point that the order includes fill-in-the-blank demand letters Google is to use) before seeking injunctive relief; the FTC sees this as a correction to Google/MMI's past approach in these cases where, in the FTC's view, Google/MMI didn't do as much as it should have regarding seeking a FRAND licensing commitment before seeking injunctive relief.
Its not really a big loss for Google, since Google would be quite happy for other parties to have the option of making the commitment that the letter offers instead of going through an injunction process (which allows Google to demand reciprocal licensing as part of the offer), and even moreso Google would be quite happy with the FTC's stated intent that the proposed approach would become a general model for handling of disputes centered on the use of standards-essential patents.
I don't think that's really all that true; if the FTC was trying to bring a case, it wouldn't agree to a Consent Order, and it would just bring a case.
Certain Google competitors have been pressing the FTC to bring a case, mostly about "search bias", and secondarily and more recently about use of standards-essential patents. The FTC, after investigating, has decided -- unanimously -- to drop the "search bias" issue, and -- narrowly, on a 3-2 vote -- to impose fairly limited restrictions in a Consent Order relating to the use of standards-essential patents, basically saying that Google has to give the other party a clear opportunity to commit to accepting a court determination of FRAND terms, where Google may include a requirement for reciprocal licensing, before it seeks an injunction.
This isn't a loss for the FTC or Google, but it may be a loss for the Google competitors that have been pushing for antitrust action.
I think allegedly is used correctly. Maybe if it read " 'scraping Web content from rivals and sheepishly passing it off as its own, said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.' Then I would be a bit confused :)
That said, the language of the TFS and timothy's editorializing Google as "soft-pedaling" are pretty lame click-trolling. The biggest complaint was the search results (not mentioned in TFS, or even the slashcloud article at all). The FRAND patent stuff was a recent addition to the now-closed investigation.
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For the Microsoft shills and companies involved with FairSearch. All of Microsoft's lobbying, attack ads and smear campaigns have failed yet again.
You do realize that this indicates they found no fault only on the Search aspect of the investigation?
Except that Motorola never offered them for 'free'. They wanted substantial trade off's from Apple in order to offer the patents, and a ridiculous cost per device while others payed substantially less. The cross licensing requirement is something which the FRAND agreement states cannot be required as a condition. Although many companies might agree to such trades, they cannot be forced to give up their own valuable copyrights and/or licensing as a condition for licensing a FRAND patent. It was idiotic that they tried to do this, and it's the primary reason they dropped all FRAND related lawsuits in the UK. They were about to get their asses handed to them if they didn't.
What makes you think that Google has ties with the NSA? Did you find that written on the inside of your tin foil hat?
Wow the case and its verdict really talks a load about the FTC initiative to drive transparency and equal access to new technology. BTW Google is fighting a similar case in EU. Details Here