antitrust

The U.S. and European officials leading separate antitrust investigations into Google are expected to meet next week in Europe, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Liebowitz is expected to meet with European Union competition chief Joaquin Almunia on Monday to discuss a range of cases, including Google's, an EU official told The Journal.

The FTC has investigated a wide range of Google's business practices, focusing mostly on the way Google displays search results, which critics say favor the company's own services over those of its competitors. The U.S. trade agency is … Read more

Google's effort to persuade investigators that it hasn't violated antitrust laws may be reaching its final stages, with CEO Larry Page reportedly meeting with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission officials today in Washington.

Citing a person familiar with the discussions, Bloomberg reports that Page met with officials in the last days of a 19-month investigation into Google's business practices. The company has been having settlement talks with the FTC for "about a week," Google reported, and is resisting pressure to enter into a consent decree affecting Google's products.

The FTC has investigated a … Read more

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

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission is pressuring Google to reach a settlement in its antitrust investigation into the company's competitive practices, according to a new report.

Citing two people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg reported that FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz is pushing Google to make an offer to settle "in the next few days." Otherwise, the agency is expected to file a formal complaint.

According to Bloomberg, the sides have been negotiating for about two weeks. So far, Google has yet to propose a remedy for the agency's concerns. The FTC has been investigating Google … Read more

Apple has reportedly negotiated a deal with European regulators that will help the company avoid litigation for potential antitrust violations while also enabling Amazon to offer lower prices than offered at Apple's iBookstore.

Reuters reports that EU regulators are preparing to accept the offer presented by Apple and four top book publishers: News Corp unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Livre, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of German company Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster, owned by CBS, parent company of CNET.

Apple's antitrust issues involving e-books began in the United States last spring. The U.S. government … 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