Google is likely to confront with subpoenas from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over anti-trust concerns and unfair practices.
Unlike previous anti-trust investigations Google faced with, which were related to acquisitions and not wide ranged, this investigation will be broad in scope and will relate directly to search advertising.
The FTC is concerned that Google may be manipulating search results to give unfair prominence to its own sites, such as YouTube or Google Maps. Google Search engine builds up by far the greatest proportion of Google’s business.
Google has strenuously denied this.
The FTC to issue subpoeanas to Google Antitrust claims in few days
The news has been welcomed by Fairsearch.org, an umbrella group for companies including Expedia, Travelocity and Microsoft which have objected to Google’s perceived market dominance.
Google ‘s unfair competition lead to downsize of other companies
“The result of Google’s unfair competition and practices is to curb innovation and investment in new technologies by other companies,” it says in a statement.
“These anti-competitive practices include scraping and using other companies’ content without their permission, deceptive display of search results, manipulation of search results to favor Google’s products, and the acquisition of competitive threats to Google’s dominance.”
Google is already under investigation by the European Commission over similar concerns of unfair competition and practices and antitrust claims.
