In August of last year, a number of German lawmakers were pressing proposed "ancillary copyright" legislation that would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items. The proposed law was championed by German magazine and newspaper publishers who, like their counterparts in the US, are seeing declining readership and ad sales. The law did pass in the German parliament, but Bloomberg reports that a compromise reached earlier this week stayed in. That compromise will allow Google (and others) "to display 'single word [...]

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In a test case that could have significant implications for Google throughout Europe the company faced off against the Spanish data protection authority in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. One could frame the case as "privacy vs. censorship." From the Spanish government's point of view its data protection authority is simply vindicating the recently articulated right (of individuals) "to be forgotten" -- to have content or data about them removed from the search index upon request. From Google's perspective, if the court agrees with Spain, the outcome would be tanta [...]

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Google's antitrust case in the US concluded in January, much to the dismay of companies that had been agitating for tough action by the FTC. It was seen as a near total victory for Google. Rivals quickly turned their attention to Europe in the hope that, unencumbered by some of the legal issues that inhibited US regulators, it would be willing to impose "meaningful" restraints on Google. There were some signals from EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia that Europe was going to take a firm stand on the vertical search or "search bias" issue. Google's alleged "search bias" towar [...]

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Google has avoided getting hit with a "link tax" in France by agreeing to create a €60 million "Digital Publishing Innovation Fund" to essentially help French media adapt to the online age. The settlement, announced today in France by President Francois Hollande and Google's Eric Schmidt -- and announced on Google's blog -- ends several months of debate over France's plan to charge Google for linking to French news content. When the French law was first proposed, Google threatened to just stop linking to French newspaper websites, saying that the country's publishers would miss out on [...]

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Yesterday, right under the deadline, Google delivered its proposal to the European Commission (EC) in an effort to settle potential antitrust claims against the company and head off a formal enforcement action. The proposal was required to concretely address four "areas of concern" identified by the EC. Briefly, those involve "search bias" and "diversion of traffic," improper use of third party content and reviews by Google, third party publisher exclusivity agreements and portability of ad campaigns to other search platforms. Google essentially addressed three of the four areas in its sett [...]

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While it might not get off quite as easily in Europe, Google definitely "dodged a bullet" at the FTC, which recently concluded its antitrust investigation and didn't ask the company to make any changes in the way it presents search results. That was a major disappointment to Google competitors, critics and other third party publishers, which have become alarmed by what they see as a virtual land grab by Mountain View. The now-familiar lament goes: once Google was simply a way to organize and discover information, to get people from A to B. However, over the past several years Google has bec [...]

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The post-mortem analysis of Google's antitrust settlement happened very quickly yesterday and this morning with some journalists and analysts concluding that factors other than the law were responsible behind the scenes. For example, Politico asserts it was largely "a calculated and expensive charm offensive" (lobbying) that drove the outcome yesterday. An even more absurd analysis argues that Google is essential to US foreign policy and thus the FTC let the company off the hook. While Google lobbying may have had an impact, in reality the the facts and the law weren't on the FTC's sid [...]

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The New York Post is reporting that relatively soon, possibly as early as next week, the FTC is scheduled to announce a settlement of its antitrust investigation and potential claims against Google. The Post says that settlement will substantially let Google off the hook: Federal regulators are expected to close a year-long probe of Google’s search business without finding any antitrust violations, The Post has learned. The Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce before the end of the year that Google’s search engine did not cause any consumer harm or favor its own businesses, [...]

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According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the top two US and European antitrust regulators will meet in Europe next week to compare notes and discuss potential outcomes. Both are negotiating with Google to settle antitrust claims that would avoid formal legal action. The FTC's Chairman Jon Leibowitz will meet with the EU's Joaquin Almunia. The claims against Google on both sides of the Atlantic are similar, though not identical. In addition, European and American antitrust laws are different though they express the same overarching principles. The WSJ reported that any concessions made [...]

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Google CEO Larry Page met with representatives of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday, according to a Bloomberg report, as the company engages in antitrust-settlement talks to avert potential litigation. The article also says that formal settlement discussions have been going on for about a week. The Bloomberg piece also reports that the FTC "has told Google it won’t accept a resolution short of a consent decree." However Google doesn't want this outcome apparently because of the ongoing enforcement authority it would grant the agency. Neither Google nor the FTC truly want [...]

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Google dodged a bullet in Germany this week as prosecutors in Hamburg decided, after a lengthy investigation, not to pursue criminal charges against the company over Street View WiFi data collection. Essentially prosecutors found that Google lacked the requisite "criminal intent" to justify prosecution. Google faces another, arguably more daunting legal challenge in Germany however. It's now confronting a proposed "ancillary" copyright rule that could go into effect early next year and effectively eliminate Google's ability to index German news sites without licensing their content. France [...]

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There are now enough indications to suggest that any antitrust settlement between the FTC and Google -- and the FTC would much prefer to settle than test its case  in court -- won't involve "vertical search." An earlier Reuters report, probably resulting from an internal FTC leak, suggested that vertical search wasn't the core of the agency's case against Google. Today Bloomberg is reporting that the FTC is "wavering" on whether to pursue a formal action against Google. In particular the agency's own people (anonymous sources) suggest they can't make the "vertical search bias" claim stick [...]

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According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal today and a parallel Bloomberg report Google faces an increasingly likely antitrust complaint unless the company steps up and offers some concessions (or additional concessions) in settlement discussions with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to Bloomberg, US FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz is "pressing" Google to settle potential antitrust claims "in the next few days or face a formal complaint." This is according to "people familiar with the situation." The phrase "people familiar with the situation" suggests FTC employees who [...]

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Earlier this month Google, which past French president Jacques Chirac once called an agent of "Anglo-Saxon cultural Imperialism," threatened to stop linking to French news websites after French publishers and the French government floated a proposal to require the search engine to license their content. Current French President Francois Hollande's government is essentially seeking to tax Google to help support or subsidize the country's ailing newspaper industry. Google has vigorously opposed the notion of paying to index and link to news sites as a threat to the company's "very existence [...]

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It’s said that keywords are a proxy for a customer, right? So let’s talk about the customer. Schema this, canonical that, and black and white zoo animals… if you don’t have a search expert on payroll, you’re already behind the Joneses. I get emails like the one below all the time, this one being from the talented owner of Castleview 3D Architectural Renderings: “I need your help.  I realy don't get the whole keywords/SEO/web marketing thing -- but I know enough to know that I shouldn't and don't want to tackle it myself. I'm a small business (small = just me) and maybe I can't [...]

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Reuters is reporting that majority of those on the US Federal Trade Commission believe an antitrust case should be brought against Google. But if action comes, it doesn't seem likely to involve Google being found to "favor" its own "vertical" search engines like local or shopping over competing ones. Apparently four of the five FTC commissioners are now convinced that "Google illegally used its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals." Another commissioner is not similarly convinced. The identities of the commissioners in favor of the action against Mountain View were not reveale [...]

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The Financial Times (FT) is reporting that the thrust of Google's antitrust settlement proposal to European Competition Czar Joaquín Almunia primarily involves "labeling" its own services to distinguish them from other organic search results. According to the FT, citing "people familiar with the search giant's submission": Under the proposal, Google would put its brand on any of its own maps, stock quotes, airline flight details or other pieces of information returned with search results. It is an attempt to resolve regulators’ fears that Google is unfairly squeezing out other specialis [...]

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In the roughly two years since Google launched flight search and hotel search, Kayak CEO Steve Hafner says, "We haven't seen any impact on our business." This statement, made in a CNBC interview, would appear to directly contradict the central claim of the lobbying group to which Kayak belongs, FairSearch.org. The central claim is that there's "growing evidence that Google is abusing its search monopoly to thwart competition." FairSearch says that Google's ability to "send traffic to its own [vertical] properties," such as flight search or hotel search, gives the company an unfair advantage [...]

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If I were a betting person I'd say that the European Commission and FTC antitrust investigations against Google will wrap up without any major "structural" changes or dramatic new rules imposed on the company. Indeed there were premature reports that Google had already settled with the EU. An announcement of some sort is imminent I suspect. In the US a number of legal scholars (both independent and sponsored by Google) have come forward to argue that under the current antitrust framework Google would potentially win any case brought by the feds. In addition a new FTC nominee disfavors antit [...]

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As the FTC considers whether to brand Google a "monopoly" and initiate an antitrust action against the company, it appears new FTC nominee Joshua Wright, a law professor from George Mason University, is not among those who favor it. In addition to being nominated by President Obama, Wright is supported by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. Politico points out that "Wright is also listed as a senior adjunct fellow for TechFreedom, a think tank that Google has listed as among the groups at which it sponsors policy fellows." Wright has also written reports and blog posts arguing the cas [...]

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