On Jan. 3, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the culmination of its antitrust investigation into three facets of Google Inc.’s business practices: online advertising, patents and search algorithms. The 19-month investigation was lengthy and extensive—the FTC held several hearings with Google executives, conducted empirical analyses of Google’s methods and examined more than 9 million pages of documents.
Google will have to make some changes, but overall the investigation landed on its side. On Google’s official blog, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond essentially declared victory: “The conclusion is clear: Google’s services are good for users and good for competition.”
