Skip to main content

Home/ New Media Ethics 2009 course/ Group items tagged Antitrust

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Weiye Loh

Google to be formally investigated over potential abuse of web dominance | Technology |... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ation-federal-trade-commission

Google Monopoly Anti-Competition Antitrust

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The inquiry will examine the heart of Google's search-advertising business, and the source of most of Google's revenue. Google accounts for around two-thirds of internet searches in the US (and close to 90% in the UK) and according to critics unfairly uses that dominance to favour its own growing network of services.Last November, the European commission opened its own formal investigation into allegations that Google discriminated against competing services in its search results and prevented some websites from using ads by Google competitors.
  • Legal experts said the investigation could be similar in scale to the massive antitrust probe of Microsoft, which started in 1991 and ended in a settlement a decade later. Professor Joshua Wright of George Mason Law School said: "The investigation will be of a comparable scale to that of Microsoft."But he said the chances of Google being found guilty of antitrust behaviour, as Microsoft was, were far smaller. Wright said for the US to bring a successful case against Google, it would have to prove the company was harming consumers. "As an outsider I would say that obstacle is far higher for them today with Google than it was back then with Microsoft," he said.
  • He said Google faced a higher risk in the EU case but that in either case the investigations were likely to have a profound impact on the firm."Even if the charges are ultimately bogus, they will occupy many, many hours of managements time and attention," he said.The FTC's investigations are likely to widen to other companies as official requests for information about their dealings with Google.The company has long denied any anticompetitive behaviour, arguing that users can easily click on other choices on the web.
  • Weiye Loh on 25 Jun 11
     
    US regulators are poised to launch a formal investigation into whether Google has abused its dominance on the web, according to reports. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is days away from serving subpoenas on the internet giant in what could be the biggest investigation yet of the search company's business, according to The Wall Street Journal. Both Google and the FTC declined to comment. A wide-ranging investigation into Google has been discussed for months. Google has faced several antitrust probes in recent years, and is already the subject of a similar investigation in Europe. In the US inquiries have so far largely been limited to reviews of the company's mergers and acquisitions.
Weiye Loh

Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13search.html

Search Engine Optimization SEO

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Here’s another hypothesis, this one for the conspiracy-minded. Last year, Advertising Age obtained a Google document that listed some of its largest advertisers, including AT&T, eBay and yes, J. C. Penney. The company, this document said, spent $2.46 million a month on paid Google search ads — the kind you see next to organic results.
  • Is it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers? It’s the sort of question that European Union officials are now studying in an investigation of possible antitrust abuses by Google.
  • Investigators have been asking advertisers in Europe questions like this: “Please explain whether and, if yes, to what extent your advertising spending with Google has ever had an influence on your ranking in Google’s natural search.” And: “Has Google ever mentioned to you that increasing your advertising spending could improve your ranking in Google’s natural search?”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Asked if Penney received any breaks because of the money it has spent on ads, Mr. Cutts said, “I’ll give a categorical denial.” He then made an impassioned case for Google’s commitment to separating the money side of the business from the search side. The former has zero influence on the latter, he said.
  • “There is a very long history at Google of saying ‘We are not going to worry about short-term revenue.’ ” He added: “We rely on the trust of our users. We realize the responsibility that we have to our users.”
  • He noted, too, that before The Times presented evidence of the paid links to JCPenney.com, Google had just begun to roll out an algorithm change that had a negative effect on Penney’s search results. (
  • True, JCPenney.com’s showing in Google searches had declined slightly by Feb. 8, as the algorithm change began to take effect. In “comforter sets,” Penney went from No. 1 to No. 7. In “sweater dresses,” from No. 1 to No. 10. But the real damage to Penney’s results began when Google started that “manual action.” The decline can be charted: On Feb. 1, the average Penney position for 59 search terms was 1.3.
  • MR. CUTTS said he did not plan to write about Penney’s situation, as he did with BMW in 2006. Rarely, he explained, does he single out a company publicly, because Google’s goal is to preserve the integrity of results, not to embarrass people. “But just because we don’t talk about it,” he said, “doesn’t mean we won’t take strong action.”
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20▼ items per page