Google Settles with FTC: Minor Changes Take Place

ForexTV NewsDesk   |  January 3 2013 3:15 EST

ForexTV.com (New York) by R. Rode

The ruling by the FTC on Google’s use of patents, search practices, and advertising tools is that Google has not abused its powers.  Google avoided having to make any sweeping changes and settled its investigation on its business practices with the FTC only with minor issues.

The FTC says, "Regarding the specific allegations that the company biased its search results to hurt competition, the evidence collected to date did not justify legal action by the Commission."

Here are some changes that Google will make after the investigation:

• It has to license standards-essential patents. When Google bought Motorola, it got access to a lot of patents that are needed for basic wireless devices. It used this patents to attack its rivals and seek injunctions. As a part of this settlement it will drop the attacks and license the patents.
• It will stop scraping the search results of specialized sites like Yelp, if Yelp asks. Google was allegedly taking business reviews from Yelp and then putting them in its own specialized search results. Then Yelp complained to Google about this, and Google allegedly said it would remove Yelp from all search results if it couldn't include Yelp's reviews for specialized search. As a part of this agreement, if a Yelp-like company complained, then Google couldn't threaten to block it from general search.
• Google has to make it easier to use Google's ad products in conjunction with rivals' ad products. There were restrictions from Google's AdWords that made it difficult to simultaneously manage ad campaigns. This will change.

Forex research by ForexTV.com