FTC vs. Google
October 13th, 2012
Today’s New York Times reports on a possible pending antitrust lawsuit against Google. Salient excerpt:
The areas of inquiry include accusations of manipulating the search results it displays to favor Google commerce services it has developed like Google Shopping for buying goods and Google Places for advertising local restaurants and businesses. In the civilian subpoenas, the F.T.C. calls this “preferencing.”
The investigators are also looking into whether Google’s automated advertising marketplace, AdWords, discriminates against advertisers from competing online commerce services like comparison shopping sites and consumer review Web sites.
C|Net also reports … and provides some interesting commentary from readers.
Stay tuned: We’ll be hearing a lot about this in the weeks to come.