EU says its Google antitrust case not affected by U.S. FTC decision

“A decision by U.S. regulators to end a probe into whether Google Inc hurt rivals by manipulating internet searches will not affect the European Union’s examination of the company,” Ethan Bilby reports for Reuters.

“U.S. regulators on Thursday ended their investigation into the giant internet company, which runs the world’s most popular search engine,” Bilby reports. “Other internet companies, such as Microsoft Corp, had complained about Google tweaking its search results to give prominence to its own products. But the FTC said there was not enough evidence to pursue a big search-bias case.”

Bilby reports, “If it fails to address the complaints and is found guilty, Google could eventually be fined [by the European Commission] up to 10 percent of its revenue – a fine of up to $4 billion.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]

Related articles:
The FTC’s missed opportunity on Google – January 4, 2013
Google to settle U.S. FTC antitrust probe, sources say – January 2, 2013

10 Comments

    1. If people don’t like Google’s practices, then they will begin using another option, such as DuckDuckGo or Yahoo. I don’t like Google, but I don’t see anything wrong with Google promoting paid results and/or their own stuff as long as they make it clear that search results are manipulated by Google. After all, businesses have manipulated search results for years in attempts to get their name at the top.

      If we want to make a difference, then let’s start a non-profit search engine with different rules. Frankly, I believe that Google’s search engine stagnated years ago and has become less and less useful over time.

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