FTC: Google Did Not Violate Antitrust Laws

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I don't know how the hell Google pulled this off but, if this report from the New York post is correct, the search giant is going to skate big time on the antitrust charges the company was facing.

Federal regulators are expected to close a year-long probe of Google’s search business without finding any antitrust violations, The Post has learned. The Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce before the end of the year that Google’s search engine did not cause any consumer harm or favor its own businesses, sources close to the situation said.
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It's because they found out Bing search sucks terribly and didn't want to have to encourage it's use.

Or that their lawyers were using Bing to search for legal documents. :p
 
maboblivion said:
microsoft's bribe wasn't large enough ?
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Maybe Google offered to switch their website's search engine to Google. Lol. :p

And, probably offered them this beauty: http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/

gsa7-splash.png
 
I dunno, seems a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Google 'advertises' its services on their own search engine (still presumably the most used search engine) and arrange their sites to just so happen to meet the criteria to almost always be the top result when people are looking for such things.

Or they create a search algorithm that, for example, if someone types in an address, google captures it and automatically enters it into Google Maps and puts it above the real "search results". That way, It's not actually a search result but an integrated Google services feature.

It's a little unfair to the smaller companies, but if you crack down on self promotion within a company's own product then that's also not fair.
 
bing lures ppl with pretty background pictures but what's more important in a search engine , pictures ? or search results!

Well i guess depends what kinda of search your doing.... considering google is censoring adult content now... ppl will have to use bing for xxx
 
Personally I don't see an issue with Google featuring their own products on their search engine, as long as they don't lock out their competition.
 
Spidey329 said:
Campaign contributions for the win!
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We have a winner !

Google was a huge backer of the current administration that won re-election.
Doesn’t matter if the initial investigation was blackmail, or dropping the investigation was a reward for thier support. The results are the same, million$ flowing to their reelection campaign.
 
kllrnohj said:
The FTC isn't elected and commissioners are on a 7 year cycle.

Sorry, but Google contributing to Obama didn't matter at all here.
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Has nothing to do with the president? Really?

The Federal Trade Commission is headed by five commissioners who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate.

At the very least I'm sure these commissioners will have a nice 6 figure job waiting for them if they don't want to be reappointed.....
 
nutzo said:
The Federal Trade Commission is headed by five commissioners who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate.
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None of whom have been nominated in the gap between the latest election and now. The same commissioners that started the investigation are the same ones that have just closed it. Nothing that happened in the last election would have affected the FTC.
 
kllrnohj said:
The FTC isn't elected and commissioners are on a 7 year cycle.

Sorry, but Google contributing to Obama didn't matter at all here.
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Yeah they're appointed and its not exactly a regular to strictly observed cycle

http://www.ftc.gov/commissioners/brill/index.shtml
Jon Leibowitz, Chairman - Appointed 2009, made chairman 2012
J. Thomas Rosch, Commissioner - Appointed 2006
Edith Ramirez, Commissioner - Appointed 2010 (mysteriously expires 2015 which allows her to be re-appointed within Obama's 2nd term)
Julie Brill, Commissioner - Appointed 2010 (also expires within Obama's 2nd term)
Maureen Ohlhausen, Commissioner - Appointed 2012

So 4 of the 5 were new appointments in 2009, 2010, 2010, & 2012

So, when you made that misleading statement, were you guessing or did you know?
 
So Rosch should be replaced here shortly and 3 of the 5 of Obama's Appointments can be re-appointed in the last couple of years extending his influence on the FTC up to 5 years after his 2nd term.

I have to give credit, whoever is running the Obama show, knows their shit. I just wish that competency would translate elsewhere in the job.
 
kllrnohj said:
None of whom have been nominated in the gap between the latest election and now. The same commissioners that started the investigation are the same ones that have just closed it. Nothing that happened in the last election would have affected the FTC.
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4 of the five were appointed by obama, but because it wasn't in the last year (oh wait one of them was), there couldn't possibly be a favor owed someplace. Your reasoning sucks.

The reason they were under investigation is anti-competitive practices based on giving top billing to google ads. The problem was that is a crap case. A company is allowed to promote it's product, and is not obliged to promote it's competitor's products in said promotion. Toyota doesn't have to mention there's the Honda Accord when they advertise the Camry. The real issue that google should be investigated on is defrauding their advertising customers as google plays very fast and loose with metrics and honesty about their service. You can pay for top billing, and actually getting that is in practice a bit arbitrary. Then there's google's play acting at ignorance of click fraud.

The real reason for no case could be the bad premise for the investigation. IT could also be that Obama has stacked the commission with people who feel that anti competitive practices don't need to be punished. THe last non Obama appointee is going bye bye soon, and the leading candidate is also of that school of thought.

So remember, if you think corporations are evils, vote democrat, because they will see that they are kept in line.. except obviously not by the FTC, they will do it with some other entitiy... that's a secret... they'll unleash it any minute now... it's taking some time... just don't vote republican or it will never get unleashed for social justice.
 
jpm100 said:
So 4 of the 5 were new appointments in 2009, 2010, 2010, & 2012

So, when you made that misleading statement, were you guessing or did you know?
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You just provided evidence that agrees with me - the results of this last election had no impact on the FTC. Unless there's a time machine involved somewhere such that a 2012 campaign contribution affected a 2009/2010 appointment.

Also I guess we should ignore that Microsoft (the one leading the "google is anti-competitive rally") contributed more to Obama's campaign than Google did.

It's fine, logic and critical thinking rarely enters a political rant, I'm sorry for attempting to add it :rolleyes:
 
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