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Wall Street Journal Reveals FTC Ignored Google's Anticompetitive Practices
According to an internal document obtained by the WSJ, in 2012 the Federal Trade Commission ignored recommendations to reform Google's anticompetitive practices. The FTC staff report concluded that Google's "conduct has resulted-and will result-in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets." The internal FTC report said the company illegally took content from rival websites to improve its own rankings and "[w]hen competitors asked Google to stop taking their content, it threatened to remove them from its search engine. The report also found that Google altered search results "to benefit its own services at the expense of rivals." In 2011 EPIC detailed for the FTC Google's manipulation of rankings for a search on the term "privacy" after it acquired YouTube. EPIC pursued an FOIA request for agency communications with the White House after the agency closed investigation.
March 23, 2015| Share:
