Jul 25, 2012 at 4:22pm ET by Greg Sterling

On the basis of statements and representations made in a Financial Times report, I wrote a post yesterday entitled "Google Strikes Antitrust Deal With EU, Avoids Legal Battle." But it's clear 24 hours later that it was premature to make such sweeping statements and declare the case "settled" in Europe. A Reuters article today makes clear that a settlement has not been formally agreed. In the article, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia speaks in the future tense about gaining a settlement agreement with Google. What appears to be true is that Google has made general concessions t [...]

Report: Google Makes Offer To Europeans To Prevent Antitrust Action

Jul 2, 2012 at 1:02pm ET by Greg Sterling

According to an article appearing in Bloomberg this morning, Google has complied with the European Commission's July 2 deadline and made concessions to address its four antitrust "concerns." Details of the offer and potential Google concessions weren't revealed: Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt sent EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia a letter responding to the probe, the EU said in a statement. The settlement offer addresses the "four areas the European Commission described" as potential concerns, Google spokesman Al Verney said in a separate e-mail. Details of the proposals weren’t d [...]

Google Faces July 2 Deadline To Settle EU Antitrust Claims — Or Else

Jun 1, 2012 at 12:21pm ET by Greg Sterling

European Commission (EC) antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia is engaged in what amounts to a poker game with Google -- or if you like a "game of chicken." In a highly public and slightly uncharacteristic move the EC offered to not bring a formal antitrust complaint against the company if it voluntarily addresses four issues or areas of "concern." The question is whether Almunia is truly trying to avoid the time, expense and waste of litigation or whether he's partly bluffing and worried about the strength of his potential case against Google. I think the answer is: a bit of both. The Four "Co [...]

RIAA Accuses Google Of Not Doing Enough To Fight Piracy, But May Be Guilty Of Not Doing Enough Itself

May 31, 2012 at 8:02am ET by Matt McGee

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has once again come out swinging at Google, saying the company isn't doing enough to fight copyright infringement online. But it may be that the RIAA itself is guilty of that charge. In a blog post this week, RIAA Executive VP Brad Buckles shares what the organization calls "clear facts" about Google's efforts to remove infringing pages from Google's search results. A week ago, Google announced the addition of Copyright Removal Requests to its Transparency Report, but Buckles says "Google's data misleads." In a series of five "facts," [...]

Second Google-Sponsored Legal Report Argues Government Would Lose Antitrust Case

May 14, 2012 at 10:16am ET by Greg Sterling

Google is playing a sophisticated form of "head games" with antitrust regulators. A second legal report-cum-brief (embedded below) has appeared. It argues that antitrust challenges against Google are likely to fail because Google's critics' arguments lack legal merit and/or make little sense from a policy perspective. The report was written by lawyers from the Ammori Group, "a law firm and Internet-law consulting practice whose clients include Google Inc." A Shrewd "PR Campaign" by Google Last week a report by UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh literally made the case that the US First Amen [...]

How “Facebook Search” Could Help Google Escape The Antitrust Noose

Apr 8, 2012 at 11:20am ET by Greg Sterling

Last week in the Chicago Tribune former judge and scholar Robert Bork (who is also a Google advisor) penned an opinion column arguing that by the accepted standards of antitrust law Google has done nothing legally wrong. Bork says, "There is extraordinary competition in the search engine business. Look at the proliferation of what are called vertical search sites that specialize in particular products or services, such as Amazon, Expedia, Kayak and hundreds of others." Who Competes with Google? This question of who competes with Google -- and is the market in fact competitive -- is central t [...]

Page To Anti-Trust Critics: “Actions” & Google+ Are An Essential Part Of Search

Apr 7, 2012 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's taken flak over the past year from critics about how the company has been integrating actions such as booking flights or hotels into its search results. It's also faced criticisms that it is leveraging its search dominance to build its Google+ social network. I found it notable that Google CEO Larry Page, in his "2012 Update from the CEO" letter, essentially pushed back against both criticisms. Page doesn't say he's attacking these criticisms in the update. That's my own reading between-the-lines. But nothing in the letter would have been presented without a good reason. I think [...]

TheFind Joins FairSearch.org To “Restore Balance” To The Search Marketplace

Mar 15, 2012 at 10:06am ET by Greg Sterling

In this corner is Google, about to make "major changes" to its algorithm and presentation of search results according to a much-discussed article in the Wall Street Journal. In the other are Google's critics who now scrutinize and critique the company's every move. The WSJ-Google article speaks about new innovations to search in an effort to deliver more "semantic" answers (not links). Yet critics will see anti-competitive behavior intended to maintain Google's dominant position and undermine smaller firms. FairSearch.org has emerged as one of Google's most vocal critics. Established in 201 [...]

Google Is Watching You (Or Not): New Privacy Policy Takes Effect Today

Mar 1, 2012 at 11:33am ET by Greg Sterling

With several governments and regulatory bodies around the world saying that Google's new privacy policy may violate their domestic rules (Europe, Japan), it goes into effect today. Advocacy group EPIC has been trying to block it saying that the consolidated privacy policy violates Google's earlier settlement with the FTC in the Buzz case/investigation. However that effort was unsuccessful. For its part, Google says the new policy will simplify privacy across Google's many properties and make it possible for the company to build a range of new products and services for consumers, including o [...]

“Scroogle.org Is Gone Forever” Says Site Owner

Feb 21, 2012 at 11:57am ET by Barry Schwartz

A week ago, we reported that Scroogle was being blocked by Google and searches on the privacy search engine were no longer working. Since then, the site continued not to work and now it is completely offline. The owner, Daniel Brandt, said he took it down "forever." He blames both Google and DDOS attack by someone or a group of people who had a personal vendetta with him. He said even if the DDOS attack did not happen, Scroogle would only have lasted an additional 6 months due to Google's throttling and squeezing of the service. Daniel told BetaBeat.com: Scroogle.org is gone foreve [...]

Cookiegate Another Privacy Black Eye For Google

Feb 17, 2012 at 10:40am ET by Greg Sterling

Call it "Cookiegate" -- or "Safarigate" perhaps. Late last night we got the Wall Street Journal's piece: "Google's iPhone Tracking: Web Giant, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy." Danny covered the article and its claims extensively at Marketing Land. This morning there's an expanding debate about whether the WSJ mischaracterized Google's behavior unfairly or whether the company has in fact been caught with its hand in the cookie jar -- as it were. To recap: Google and other ad networks (i.e., Gannett's PointRoll) were discovered circumventing mobile Safari's defaul [...]

Scroogle Says Google Is Blocking Their Privacy Search Engine

Feb 14, 2012 at 3:51pm ET by Barry Schwartz

If you try to conduct a search at Scroogle, the portal that lets you search Google in private, Scroogle will tell you that Google is blocking them. I just tested it and Scroogle returns an error message that reads, "so sorry... Google is temporarily blocking this Scroogle server." This happened back in May 2010 as well, and probably happens fairly often. Google told BetaBeat that they are not manually blocking Scroogle but they do have automated systems in place that "deter scraping or excessive queries to Google, and spikes in query traffic can cause issues for some sites." So this [...]

Matt Cutts Convinces Some South Korean Govt. Websites To Stop Blocking Googlebot

Jan 31, 2012 at 4:11pm ET by Matt McGee

Matt Cutts, international diplomat? That might be the more appropriate title for Google's chief spam cop. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cutts is in South Korea this week and, in a presentation Monday night for about 80 government officials, webmasters, lawyers and journalists, managed to singlehandedly convince some government reps to let Googlebot crawl and index their websites. One of those in the audience was Kang Min-koo, a senior judge in the Seoul High Court. When he saw the court's Web site was on Mr. Cutts' list of government sites that couldn't be indexed by Google – and [...]

Two Weeks In, Google Says “Search Plus Your World” Going Well, Critics Should Give It Time

Jan 28, 2012 at 12:11am ET by Danny Sullivan

Two weeks ago, Google launched Search Plus Your World. Since then, Google has faced strong criticisms that SPYW is making its search relevancy worse and favoring its Google+ social network too much. Not so, says Google search chief Amit Singhal. Most Google users are happy, Singhal said. Of course, Search Plus Your World isn't perfect, he admits, but it'll improve. As for including content from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, Google's open to that, as long as long-term deals can be reached that give Google faith it can build new features that will last. I talked today wi [...]

Major Entertainment Groups Accuse Google, Bing Of Directing Users To Illegal Content

Jan 26, 2012 at 3:33pm ET by Matt McGee

Several major UK entertainment industry groups are accusing Google and Bing of directing searchers to illegal content, and have proposed a "Code of Practice" for how search engines can better encourage consumers to locate legal content on the web. The groups are also calling for the UK government to help oversee how well the search engines administer the recommendations listed in the Code of Practice. As The Guardian reports, the groups involved in the proposal include the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Associati [...]

FairSearch.org Introduces Anti-Google “Good To Know” Ad Campaign

Jan 26, 2012 at 9:35am ET by Greg Sterling

FairSearch.org, a consortium of companies that originally came together to oppose the Google acquisition of ITA and includes Tavelocity, Microsoft and TripAdvisor among others, has added several new members to its ranks and launched an anti-Google print-ad campaign. Entitled "Good to Know," the ads seek to expose "truths" about Google and its alleged conflicts of interest. The ads argue that Google unfairly promotes its own products, delivers search results that aren't objective or in the best interests of users and doesn't respect user privacy. The ads assert that they're telling the publi [...]

A Proposal For Social Network Détente

Jan 23, 2012 at 10:15pm ET by Danny Sullivan

For the past two weeks, I feel like I've been witnessing some type of Cuban Missile Crisis going on between Google, Twitter and Facebook. I'd like to suggest some ways that social-nuclear war might be averted. Beyond Blame, Believing In Cooperation Let's set aside blame, because blame isn't going to move anything forward. Let's also assume that all the players can be taken to some degree at their word, that they do indeed want to work together in some ways. What does everyone want? The Wants & A Game Changer Google has wanted its own social graph for some time. By social graph, I [...]

“Don’t Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Shows Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Can Go Beyond Google+

Jan 23, 2012 at 9:01am ET by Danny Sullivan

I've written that Google has plenty of public data to allow parts its new Search Plus Your World feature to be inclusive of rival social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now, those networks are proving that true, through a new "Don't Be Evil" tool that lets anyone leverage Google's own results to see this. The tool -- a bookmarklet that works in your browser -- changes three parts of Search Plus Your World that currently shows information only from Google Plus. These are: People & Pages results Google+ Sitelinks Google+ Suggestions In Autocomplete The tool can be found on [...]

Google’s SPYW, Kenya Imbroglios An “Ink Blot” Test For Google As Good Or Evil

Jan 13, 2012 at 11:12am ET by Greg Sterling

I woke up this morning to discover some fairly outrageous allegations against Google in Kenya. Local search/directory startup Mocality says that Google crawled its site for local business sales leads and then falsely claimed in cold calls to those businesses it had a partnership with the publisher to sign them up. Mocality founder Stefan Magdalinski explains in a blog post that his company conducted a "sting" against Google and offers evidence of his claims against the company. Google says it's investigating. Beyond unethical there's a question about the legality of the behavior if proven [...]

To Understand Google Favoritism, Think “If Google+ Were YouTube”

Jan 12, 2012 at 2:17pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's favoritism of Google+ in its new Search Plus results is just the latest in the line of favoritism it has done with vertical search? It's not, because Google hasn't really favored itself with vertical search. It is favoring itself with Google+, and that's why things are so disturbing. Vertical Search Is What Search Engines Should Do Long-time Google-critic and occasional Microsoft consultant Ben Edelman has this out today: I've found more than a dozen Google services receiving favored placement in Google search results. Consider Google Blog Search, Google Book Search, Google Checko [...]

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