US Antitrust Problems for Google May be Over
The Washington Post reported that the FTC and Google have reached a deal in the 2 year investigation about monopoly practices where Google “would agree to new limits on its ability to use snippets of content from other Web sites and would agree to make it easier for marketers to transfer their online ads to other services.” However the five FTC Commissioners still have to ratify this agreement.
Assuming the US resolves its antitrust claims against Google, don’t forget that the EU continues to press its antitrust claims against Google. In a report earlier this year the Washington Post indicated that the threat to Google was a:
…$4 billion fine and a formal ruling that it has abused its dominance in the search market to hurt rivals across a range of industries.
Since Google accounts for about 90% of the searches in the EU a negative antitrust ruling will surely impact Google’s business.
