Google faces Antitrust Investigation from U.S. government

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Elena Vnorovscaia/ Chişinău / Moldova.ORG/ -- Google faces Broad Antitrust Investigation from U.S. government, which is trying to determine whether the Internet Search Giant abused its dominant position in the online advertising market in order to crush rivals.

Federal Trade Commission will begin serving Google with subpoenas in the start of a broad antitrust investigation into the company's Web and search dominance.

Prosecutors from at least three U.S. states have started investigations on the operations of Google. The person declined to give details but said that the General Attorneys from California, Ohio and New York are already in the early investigation stages.

Google's business practices will be investigated very attentively, especially the search product that makes up nearly 66% of search traffic in the United States.

One of the key issues, according to The Wall Street Journal, will be if Google "unfairly channels users to its growing network of services at the expense of rivals." Microsoft once went down the antitrust road, and the results were damaging for the software giant.

The company, which dominates the U.S. market and the global Internet search engines and advertising through this channel has been repeatedly accused of favoring their own services.

Representatives of Google and the FTC declined to comment the information. In his turn, Attorneys from California and New York have also refused to testify, while the Ohio State Attorney was not available for comment at all.

Governments in America and Europe have received numerous complaints concerning the activities of Google, most from the company's rivals. The European Union and the state of Texas have launched independent investigations against Google concerning its search and online advertising dominance.

Within the last week, Google's $400 million acquisition of AdMeld, a company that focused on return-of-investment optimization of online ad buying, is being investigated by the Department of Justice for antitrust concerns.

In addition, a judge from New York states that company’s agreements with several publishers to create a huge digital library is illegal, partly because Google would get the rights of in-copyright books whose authors cannot be found.
 

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