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Us Regulator Drops Charges Against Google Monopoly

By mike, Jan 04 in blog with 0 comments

After a 20-month probe, US regulators have announced they will not charge Google over its internet search practices.

Rivals accused the internet giant of producing biased search results and abusing its market dominance to thwart competitors.

The Federal Trade Commission said it lacked a legal basis to bring a monopoly abuse case against the company, but found that Google had misused its broad patents on mobile phone technology.

In an attempt to protect competition for US consumers, the Commission ordered Google to make that mobile phone technology available to its rivals.

In a voluntary settlement, Google also agreed to change its "most troubling" search and advertising practices.

These changes included agreeing to no longer "scrape" competitors’ content to make it look like it came from Google and using contractual restrictions to stop small businesses from advertising with rival search engines.

Source: ABC News, AFP

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.