Last year, the FTC started their antitrust investigation of Google. Since then, the company has launched their social network, Google+ and just recently changes to search where Google+ is highlighted.

This has sparked more concerns and the FTC is said to be adding the social network to it’s investigation of possible antitrust practices.

Via Businessweek:

“The competition issues raised by Google+ go to the heart of the FTC’s investigation into whether the company is giving preference to its own services and whether that practice violates antitrust laws, said the people, who declined to be identified because the investigation isn’t public.”

Being that Google is such a large and powerful company, it’s no surprise they’re being investigated. They get Billions of searches every month and there’s massive amounts of data that they knowingly have access to.

No evidence of wrong doing has been found as of yet and the investigation is still ongoing. Many people are saying that they’re favoring Google+ in search while it’s public knowledge that Twitter decided to not renew a social search deal and Facebook didn’t want anything to do with it.

Social search is essentially search that pulls in information from social networks or at the current point in time, Google+.

“Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman, said in an e-mail, “the laws are designed to help consumers benefit from innovation, not to help competitors. We believe that our improvements to search will benefit consumers.”

Now, if Twitter decides to be put back in social search again and a deal can be made, this would definitely take some of the heat off of Google. Currently there’s no talks about that however.

FTC Adding Google+ To Antitrust Investigation is a post from: The Inquisitr

There has always been rumors of an agreement between some of the biggest tech companies that they wouldn’t go around trying to hire top talent away from each other. Well it turns out that this wasn’t just a rumor as the Department of Justice in the U.S. filed suit the afternoon of September 24 against six high profile tech companies.

The DoJ state that Google, Intel, Apple, Adobe, Inuit and Pixar made agreements with each other not to poach competitor employees. This in the eyes of the government restrained competition between them for highly skilled employees. The DoJ also states that starting as early as 2005 the companies agreed to create do not call lists of each other’s employees as well as lists of companies that were off limits.

A couple of the examples given in the DoJ statement are

Beginning no later than 2006, Apple and Google executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees.   Apple placed Google on its internal “Do Not Call List,” which instructed employees not to directly solicit employees from the listed companies.  Similarly, Google listed Apple among the companies that had special agreements with Google and were part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list;

[....]

Beginning no later than September 2007, Google and Intel executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees.   In its hiring policies and protocol manual, Google listed Intel among the companies that have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list.   Similarly, Intel instructed its human resources staff about the existence of the agreement; and

Now at the same time that the civil antitrust complaint was being filed a five-year settlement was also filed that would in effect end the suit.

The proposed settlement, which if accepted by the court will be in effect for five years, prohibits the companies from engaging in anticompetitive no solicitation agreements.   Although the complaint alleges only that the companies agreed to ban cold calling, the proposed settlement more broadly prohibits the companies from entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.   The companies will also implement compliance measures tailored to these practices.

It’s so nice to see everyone getting along so well together eh.

Google, Apple, Adobe sued by the Feds, and then settled is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ever wondered what was behind that $1.45 billion dollar fined that the European Union levied against Intel?

Well the EU’s antitrust division has released a public version of its May ruling against Intel and boy it isn’t pretty. Part of the ruling found that Intel had had issued “conditional rebates” to Dell from December 2002 to December 2005 – the condition being that it would only give rebates to Dell if they bought only Intel microprocessors.

In an internal Dell presentation in February, 2003, a Dell official noted that if Dell switched any of its microprocessor supplies from Intel to AMD, Intel’s retaliation could be “severe and prolonged with impact to all lines of business.” In a February, 2004, email, a Dell executive wrote that Intel executives were prepared for all-out war if Dell joined the exodus to buy AMD chips. Dell would have gotten zero market development funds for at least a full quarter. Intel would also use the market development funds not used by Dell to fund competitors to Dell.

Source: VentureBeat – EU releases dirty details of evidence against Intel in antitrust case

Apparently the same deal was applied to HP during November 2002 to May 2005 where any rebates were conditional on HP buying 95 percent of its processors for business desktops from Intel. Like the other two NEC was as well told that they would need to buy no less than 80 percent of its microprocessors for desktops and notebooks from Intel in order to qualify for rebates.

This kind of business practice was also extended to what was termed as “naked restrictions”. This tied Intel payments to HP, Acer and other companies on these companies limiting the types of AMD based systems sold to specific channels or by delaying the launch of AMD based systems. In an internal HP email in September 2004 an executive stated: “You can NOT use the commercial AMD line in the channel in any country, it must be done direct. If you do and we get caught (and we will) the Intel moneys is gone. The risk is too high.”

Of course Intel is contesting the decision citing – “There is nothing new here. This Decision reflects the underlying bias we have come to expect from the case team that ran this investigation.”

Intel’s dirty laundry getting aired by the EU is a post from: The Inquisitr