Google Being Investigated for 44 AntiTrust Violations

I have been following this for quite some time. I have always been more than concerned over how easy it is for a competitor to exhaits your daily bid on Adwords, and it looks like there are other concerns as well. I am keeping an open mind over this. After all, Google rocks. Anyways, an investigation of Google’s business practices is being urged by FairSearch.org, a group of companies that feels Google may be violating antitrust policies. The investigation is being urged of all 50 U.S. state Attorney Generals by the coalition, which includes not only Google’s main rival Microsoft, but also other companies such as Expedia, Kayak, TripAdvisor, and Travelocity. The coalition delivered a letter and white paper consisting of 44 pages of allegations that Google is abusing their dominant search position illegally.

According to FairSearch.org, Google harms not only its competitors, but also consumers, the economy, creativity, and job growth with its alleged illegal antitrust violations. They feel that it is vital that Google’s practices be thoroughly investigated by the attorney generals. These allegations are not necessarily new to Google who already is being probed by not only national but international groups; the U.S. Federal Trade Commission as well as the European Union and Korean Fair Trade Commission have antitrust probes concurrently. Additionally, some attorney generals have already begun investigation into potential antitrust violations by Google.

FairSearch.org’s advisor and former Attorney General of Rhode Island, Patrick Lynch, states “Evidence is mounting that Google’s business practices deserve further investigation from law enforcement and antitrust officials, and that the time to act to protect competition, innovation, and consumers is now.” He furthermore states “State Attorneys General have a critical role to play in investigating Google’s conduct to prevent further harm to competition and consumers, and many of you are already deeply involved.”

Lynch feels that Google employs “deceptive” search results, manipulating the viewer into clicking on links that benefit Google. These links are said to be placed near the top or middle of all searches so that they are most likely to be chosen, yet appear to be organic results even though they are not. Accusations by Lynch include further tricking of users by employing a search-ranking algorithm that purposefully excludes sites or lowers them to a position where they are less likely to be seen and chosen by users.

Lynch further claims that Google is responsible for the theft of content from other websites to display on their own pages without having obtained necessary permission from the originator of the content.

Additionally, FairSearch.org alleges that Google purposefully inflates their own advertising prices by tampering with quality scores. They state that Google is aware of their dominant position as an advertising venue and abuses this position by such inflation of ad rates, knowing that other companies must buy at these rates to get necessary exposure.

FairSearch.org alleges that Google is suppressing competition and thus cheating consumers by buying companies that allow it to monopolize the growing mobile search market. After purchasing these companies, Google is said to employ “exclusivity restrictions…to maintain and expand its dominance”, such as with the Android licensing, according to the letter.

The formation of FairSearch.org originally began in opposition to the acquisition by Google of ITA Software, maker of software for air travel and flight information, for $700 million. In October of last year, FairSearch.org began its battle with this search company giant. Despite protests, the acquisition of ITA Software by Google was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice. However, there were conditions placed on the acquisition, including the requirement that Google develop and license software for use by its online travel site competitors. Furthermore, Google must be responsible for arbitration concerning complaints about fees from said sites.

When asked to comment, Google declined.