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Report: FTC Expanding Anti-Trust Investigation Of Google To Include Google+

Pamela Parker on January 13, 2012 at 5:55 pm

The wide-ranging Federal Trade Commission investigation into Google’s potential anti-competitive practices has been expanded to include its Google+ social networking service, according to a Bloomberg report citing “people familiar with the situation.”

The news is likely to please critics like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which earlier this week called for the FTC to investigate the recent search changes called Search Plus Your World. Besides EPIC, many others, including Twitter, have questioned whether the new features favor Google’s own services over those of competitors.

Google in June of last year acknowledged the probe by the FTC. Though the agency has never specified the scope of the investigation, it was reportedly focused on the company’s search business — trying to determine whether the search behemoth was somehow unfairly exploiting its dominance in the sector.

Google declined to comment about the widening of the probe, according to the Bloomberg report.

About The Author

Pamela Parker

Pamela Parker is Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Search Engine Land. She's a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998. She's a former managing editor of ClickZ, and worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing.