EU says its Google case not affected by U.S. ruling
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People walk past a logo next to the main entrance of the Google building in Zurich March 9, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann
BRUSSELS |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A decision by U.S. regulators to end a probe into whether Google Inc hurt rivals by manipulating internet searches will not affect the European Union's examination of the company.
"We have taken note of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) decision, but we don't see that it has any direct implications for our investigation, for our discussions with Google, which are ongoing," said Michael Jennings, a spokesman for the European Commission, the EU executive.
U.S. regulators on Thursday ended their investigation into the giant internet company, which runs the world's most popular search engine.
Other internet companies, such as Microsoft Corp, had complained about Google tweaking its search results to give prominence to its own products. But the FTC said there was not enough evidence to pursue a big search-bias case.
The European Commission has for the past two years been investigating complaints against Google, including claims that it unfairly favored its own services in its search results.
Google presented informal settlement proposals to the Commission in July. On December 18 the Commission gave the company a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolve the investigation.
If it fails to address the complaints and is found guilty, Google could eventually be fined up to 10 percent of its revenue - a fine of up to $4 billion.
(Reporting By Ethan Bilby; Editing by Sebastian Moffett and David Goodman)
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If any small website owner does this, the site will be shut down for Copyright Infringement. Money talks and Google gets away, FTC should at least put a warning that Google doesn’t provide a balance search on web popularity verses paid sites, I for one do not use Google, its bias against real quantity content and small webmasters trying to make a living.
Google could just use the advert side bar but no they want to control what you search for, is this fair without displaying a warning that they are manipulating the search results for paid advertisers.
Google was great until it went corp, now a big bad monster
EU says its Google case not affected by U.S. ruling. Which is correct? From a European perspective Google offers an internet platform as such nothing illegel but a platform for illegality. I dealer for the junkies and through intervention of privacy, the extortionists.
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