The FTC Report on Google’s Business Practices

Scan the document from the U.S. antitrust investigation of the Internet giant

Published March 24, 2015 at 7:40 p.m. ET
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This report was prepared in 2012 by staffers at the Federal Trade Commission’s competition unit after a lengthy antitrust investigation into Google Inc. The staff recommended bringing a lawsuit challenging certain Google practices. The Commission ultimately voted, 5-0, not to bring charges against Google.

The company has defended its search engine and business practices. "We understand that what was sent to the Wall Street Journal represents 50% of one document written by 50% of the FTC case teams. Ultimately both case teams (100%) concluded that no action was needed on search display and ranking. Speculation about consumer or competitor harm turned out to be entirely wrong. On the other issues raised, we quickly made changes as agreed with the FTC."

The 160-page document was supposed to remain private but half of the pages were inadvertently disclosed in an open-records request. The FTC declined to release the remaining pages. The Journal has redacted names of FTC staff and company lawyers from the first page of the report. The drawings and notations were in the documents that were provided by the FTC.

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