Antitrust

The Federal Trade Commission may not have enough evidence of harm to consumers to proceed with an antitrust claim against the heart of Google's business, search, Bloomberg reported.

Google faces antitrust investigations from the U.S. FTC and from the European Commission, both going on for many months and both carrying the potential to wreak havoc with Google's search business. At the heart of the issue is whether Google gives unfair prominence to its own properties -- YouTube, Google Flight Search, Google Images, Google Shopping, Google Maps, and more -- at the expense of other businesses.

Regulators aren'… Read more

Tim Carter was blindsided when his home-improvement site AsktheBuilder.com fell out of favor with Google's search algorithm about 21 months ago. His daily ad revenue from Google AdSense crashed from $1,400 to $70.

"I have learned my lesson," Carter said. "Anybody who builds a business based on the whims of a search engine's algorithms -- that's a foolish thing to do."

This recrimination, mind you, is coming from a former Google advocate. In 2009, Google published an AdSense case study about his success, and Carter even testified before the U.S. Congress … Read more

Think of them as the good cop and the bad cop.

Two individuals hold central positions in Google's antitrust challenges from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the EU's European Commission. As the European commissioner for competition, Joaquin Almunia has tremendous influence over what happens to Google. And in the United States, George Mason University professor Joshua Wright is expected to get some influence soon as an incoming FTC commissioner.

They contrast sharply. Almunia has been highly critical of Google and how it's done business since becoming dominant in search. Wright, though, not only advocates minimal … Read more

eBay violated antitrust laws when it agreed not to poach employees at Intuit, according to a federal lawsuit filed today in federal court in San Jose.

According to the complaint, which was filed by the U.S. Justice Department, eBay and Intuit had an agreement not to raid each other's businesses for talent. eBay, the online marketplace, is headquartered in San Jose; Intuit is based in nearby Mountain View.

"This agreement harmed employees by lowering the salaries and benefits they might otherwise have commanded, and deprived these employees of better job opportunities at the other company," lawyers … Read more

Technology topics can mark a rare bipartisan area of political agreement: Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama say they would make cybersecurity a priority, and both like to talk up government funding of basic research.

If you look a bit more closely, however, differences emerge. They're perhaps most marked over federal regulation, where the two major parties have long-standing disagreements, but also exist on topics like WikiLeaks, copyright legislation, and whether to levy a new tax on broadband providers.

Keep reading for CNET's 2012 Tech Voters' Guide, in which we highlight where the four candidates -- we've … Read more

This is a guest post.

The Internet market is notoriously dynamic. Its giants rise and fall far faster than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. This dynamism perplexes and worries many -- especially regulators in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps no Internet leader faces as much scrutiny from government as Google, which has been the subject of a Federal Trade Commission antitrust probe for over a year. As this investigation comes to a close, the government is reportedly leaning toward suing Google before year's end. Naturally, its rivals are lobbying the feds to come down hard on the search giant.

Yet Google's … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- It's not certain that Google will face a federal antitrust lawsuit by year's end. But if that happens, it seems likely to follow an outline sketched by Thomas Barnett, a Washington, D.C., lawyer on the payroll of Google's competitors.

Barnett laid out his arguments during a presentation here last night: Google is unfairly prioritizing its own services such as flight search over those offered by rivals such as Expedia, and it's unfairly incorporating reviews from sites like Yelp without asking for permission.

"They systematically reinforce their dominance in search and search … Read more

European antitrust regulators have sent Microsoft a list of objections, charging the software giant with breaching its previous commitment to offer Windows users a choice of Internet browsers.

The formal statement of objections sent to Microsoft today outlines how the company failed to offer a "browser choice" screen to millions of Windows users, which it had agreed to do under a legally binding 2009 settlement with the European Commission.

The Commission said in a statement that it "takes the preliminary view that Microsoft has failed to roll out the browser choice screen with its Windows 7 Service … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Few Silicon Valley companies have ever embraced a political party as passionately as Google has. Its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has been described as a "kind of guru" to President Obama's campaign manager, and Google employees emerged as the No. 2 donor to the Democratic National Committee in the last election.

That love affair has now become a bit one-sided. Obama's pick to run the Federal Trade Commission, Jon Leibowitz, a Democrat and former aide to Democratic senators, has been carefully preparing a legal assault on the search company.

Leibowitz took the unusual … Read more