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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation | Top News

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Google has been sued by the Texas Attorney General's office. The Texas Attorney General is currently investigating Google's alleged anti-competitive behavior and potential abuse of power. That investigation is essentially parallel to what's going on at the Federal Trade Commission. The suit, filed Monday in Texas state court, doesn't claim Google is engaging in anti-competitive activity. Rather the lawsuit is seeking to compel Google to turn over documents relevant to the investigation. Google has declined to hand over the disputed [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation

Google's security blog announced today several updates on how they have been addressing malware and hacked sites on the internet. Google said that between 12 and 14 million search queries per day return warnings that at least one of the results listed in the Google search results were compromised. Google has two types of labels for sites that were hacked, either they are listed as compromised or as harmful. The difference is that compromised sites are hacked and the content and links may have changed but they are likely not harmful to the searcher to click on them. The harmful warning is an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Security | Google: Web Search | Legal: Security | Top News

In 2002, the US Federal Trade Commission created guidelines on how search engines should disclose paid placement and paid inclusion listings. It's become clear to me over the past two weeks that the search engine industry has either largely forgotten these guidelines or is ignoring them. That's why I've written a letter today to the FTC asking that the agency conduct a compliance review, as well as a review to see if its guidelines should be updated. My letter is below. ========== US Federal Trade Commission Attn: Chairman Jon Leibowitz; Bureau of Consumer Protection, Division of Adv [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features: Analysis | Google: Antitrust | Legal | Legal: Regulation | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Google: Web Search | Legal: Regulation

Google announced on their blog that they have noticed an increase in complaints from searchers in mainland China. The issues they are reporting is that Google.com and searchers are not coming up, as if Google.com is down. So Google investigated their servers and operations and noticed no issues with anything on Google's side. So they ran some tests and were able to confirm that many queries lead to Google acting as if Google is unreachable. They produced a video showing this in action, where one query would work but then another query would lead to a response of either "This webpage [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google & China | Google: Outside US | Google: Web Search | Legal: Censorship | Legal: Regulation

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," [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: Copyright | Top News

Microsoft says it does send copyright-related takedown requests to its own search engine, Bing, in addition to the multitude of requests that it sends to Google. This comes on the heels of yesterday's news that Microsoft is the number one submitter of copyright-related URL removal requests to Google. It sent more than 500,000 such requests in the past month, asking Google to remove URLs that host pirated copies of Microsoft products and other copyright-infringing material. TechDirt pointed out that some of the URLs that Microsoft asked Google to remove were still appearing in Bing's sear [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Copyright | Microsoft: Bing | Top News

Google announced they have enhanced the Google Transparency Report to include the removal requests to take down individual search results from showing up in Google. In fact, Google has told us in the past month they have received 1,246,713 removal requests from 24,129 different target domains of 1,296 copyright owners by 1,087 reporting organizations. So only just over a thousand copyright owners submitted removal requests and top five include Microsoft with over a half a million URL removal requests last month followed by British Recorded Music Industry, NBC Universal, Elegant Angel and R [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Google: Web Search | Legal: Copyright

European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia issued a statement this morning offering "preliminary conclusions" of the EU's  investigation of numerous antitrust complaints against Google. It lays out "concerns" about Google's market power in four areas. Almunia acknowledges Google's prior statements about a willingness to settle and suggests that if a settlement can be reached Europe and Google will be able to put the matter behind them: I believe that these fast-moving markets would particularly benefit from a quick resolution of the competition issues identified. Restoring competit [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Antitrust | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation | Top News

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 [...]

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Google now faces antitrust investigations on multiple continents. The US FTC recently hired a prominent outside litigator in a sign that it may be preparing to bring an action against the company. But does Google have a "slam dunk" defense against such a case (at least in the US) under the First Amendment of the Constitution? A Preview of Google's Legal Arguments? Yes says UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh in a new paper-cum-legal brief. The document, which was commissioned by Google, also serves as a kind of template for legal arguments Google might make in a US antitrust case. The release o [...]

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As their long-running legal battle continues, Google has asked a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits brought by authors' and photographers' groups over its book-scanning service. According to Bloomberg News, Google told judge Denny Chin that The Authors Guild can't sue on behalf of the authors because the Guild doesn't own the copyrights to the books that Google has been scanning since the program was announced in 2004. Reuters reports that, in response to Google's claim, Chin said "it would take forever" to resolve individual author's lawsuits and that it "seems to make sense" to allow th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Book Search | Google: Legal | Legal: Copyright | Top News

It’s been long known in the industry that brand term keywords garner a much higher click-through-rate. As a result, marketers often start by bidding on their own brand terms.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | How To: PPC | How To: SEM | Legal: Trademarks

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today revived part of Rosetta Stone's trademark lawsuit against Google, meaning the search giant's permitting the use of trademarked terms in AdWords is still legally questionable in the United States. It's the first time an appellate court has ruled in a case of this kind. Previously, a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia issued a summary judgment in the case in 2010, essentially saying that the language software maker didn't have a valid trademark infringement claim against Google. Rosetta Stone appealed. The company h [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Legal | Legal: Trademarks

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Antitrust | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: Regulation

The US FTC has subpoenaed Apple to provide documentation and information about Google's presence on iOS as the default search engine. According to Bloomberg the FTC is also seeking similar information from handset makers and carriers. This arises in the context of the US government's broad anti-trust investigation of Google. These "default search" deals are common and Microsoft has done many of them. Like Spain and Portugal dividing up the "non-Christian world" in 1494 with the Treaty of Tordesillas, default search deals on PCs, browsers and mobile devices are essentially divided up between [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Legal: General | Legal: Regulation

Last week the Pew Internet Project released findings of a survey on search, personalization and targeted advertising. In a nutshell, survey respondents had a very positive view of search and the quality of search results. Yet the majority gave an unequivocal thumbs down to search personalization (and behavioral targeting). This isn't necessarily a contradiction or paradox in the abstract, but it is when you consider that the most popular search engine is moving aggressively in a direction most people say they don't want search to go. Here's our earlier coverage of the survey: Pew Repo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Privacy | Google: Search Plus Your World | Google: Web Search | Legal: Privacy | Stats: Popularity | Stats: Search Behavior

Personalized search? Both Google and Bing will tell you that it provides better results. But two-thirds say they don't care. They view personalized search as a "bad thing," a new survey finds. Nearly three-quarters also view gathering data to personalize results to be a privacy invasion. The findings come out of a survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Around 2,000 adults in the US were questioned between January 20 and February 19 of this year as part of a wide-ranging poll about search engine use, though fewer may have answered particular questions. Personalized Sea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: Analysis | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Search Plus Your World | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: Personalized Search Engines | Search Features: Search History & Personalization | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Regulation | Top News