Sunday, October 21, 2012

Is Google Anti-Competitive?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
I have not made up my mind. But Google gets the benefit of doubt from me.

FTC moving closer to Google antitrust case
The majority of top decision-makers at the Federal Trade Commission believe that an antitrust case should be brought against Google Inc, meaning the search giant could soon be headed into tough negotiations ..... Google illegally used its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals ..... Google rivals specializing in travel, shopping and entertainment have accused Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, of unfairly giving their web sites low quality rankings in search results to steer Internet users away from their websites and toward Google products that provide similar services. ..... Google refuses to share data that would allow advertisers and developers to create software to compare the value they get on Google to advertising spending on Microsoft's Bing or Yahoo. ..... the FTC is looking at Google's handling of valuable patents, which are determined to be essential to smartphones. The agency is trying to determine if they are licensed fairly and whether patent infringement lawsuits are used to hamper innovation.
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