The American Federal Trade Commission has expanded its probe into Google to look at Google's Plus network, in an investigation into whether Google 'cooks' search results to favour its own products, a source said on Friday.
Google+, which was launched in June, is similar to Facebook and Twitter.
A new version of Google search - called Plus Your World - caused protests last week after it mixed photos and posts from Plus into Google searches.
Under fire: Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt faces closer scrutiny from anti-trust politicians considering whether the company has a monopoly
However, the social networking aspect only applies to users of Google Plus, the company's own social networking site, leaving the likes of Twitter and Facebook out in the cold.
Twitter described the move as 'warped'.
Bloomberg earlier on Friday reported the expansion of the Google probe, citing two people familiar with the situation.
A Google spokesman, however, said that the Federal Trade Commission had not asked about Google+ or indicated it was looking into the new social network as of this week.
The Federal Trade Commission declined comment.
'Google is effectively using its popularity as a search engine provider to promote its social network by prioritizing Google+ data,' said PC World magazine last week. 'Bundling one smaller service on the back of another much bigger one is what sparked Microsoft's trouble with antitrust regulators through the late 1990s and early 2000s when it included Internet Explorer with Windows.'
Google claims the lack of results from companies such as Twitter is due to their withdrawing from agreements about how Google indexes their results.
'We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer,' says a company spokesperson.
'The laws are designed to help consumers benefit from innovation, not to help competitors. We believe that our improvements to search will benefit consumers by better surfacing social content, and the great thing about the openness of the Internet is that if users don’t like our service they can easily switch to another site,' said a spokesperson.
Google new 'Search plus your world' feature has come under fire from Twitter's general counsel for prioritising results from Google's Plus social network
The Federal Trade Commission, attorneys general in six states, and the European Commission are looking into complaints alleging Google has been unfairly exploiting its dominance in Internet search to promote its other services while ignoring or downplaying pertinent information about its rivals.
Senators are trying to get an accurate reading of the power the Californian company wields over the search industry.
And by promoting its own social networking site, Google has pushed itself further into controversial territory.
The new changes are 'exactly the kind of thing that the antitrust people are screaming about,' said Danny Sullivan, an industry expert who has been following Google since the 1990s.
'This is very un-Google like. It's unfair to other services and it's unfair to people.'
The move has been compared by industry commentators Microsoft's 1998 decision to bundle its own Internet Explorer with Windows, defeating Netscape as the market leader of the day.
Google has used personal data in its search results to varying degrees since since 2005.
Monopoly moment: Bill Gates decided in 1998 to bundle its own Internet Explorer with Windows, defeating Netscape as the market leader of the day
But the 'next level' changes, which were officially launched on Tuesday, may already have had a sizeable effect on the number of people using Google Plus, which has lagged behind Facebook and Twitter since its inception.
The internet analysis company Hitwise has reported that traffic to Google's social networking site was up by 55 per cent in December, month-to-month.
It is possible that the surge was simply caused by lots of gift-wrapped tablet computers running Google applications, but Google is clearly set on boosting its social network.
Company spokesman Amit Singhal said: 'Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started.
'You can connect with them on Google+, strike up meaningful conversations and discover entire communities in a way that simply wasn’t possible before'.
Behind the scenes Google argues that its terms of service prevent it from trawling other social networks - such as Facebook and Twitter - for information, which means that if the 'big two' want to be included, they have to volunteer their content to Google.
Users can opt out out of the new personal services by changing their settings but the move has been slammed by Twitter's general counsel for 'warping' search results.
Twitter's Alex Macgillivray - an ex-employee of Google - tweeted from his personal account: 'Bad day for the Internet. Having been there, I can imagine the dissension at Google to search being warped this way.'
But the company issued a statement declaring the move will make it more difficult to find breaking news and other compelling information shared within the 250 million messages, or tweets, posted on its service each day.
Google Plus your world: The move has been slammed by Twitter, which claims it will be harder to find breaking news on the web
It said: 'We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.'
In an interview with Marketing Land, Google's Eric Schmidt denied that the company's results were made to prioritise Plus over other social services.
If the new formula works as Google expects, the search results will include pertinent information culled from the requestor's Plus account.
For instance, a query about a football team might include links and comments made about the team by other people in one of the social circles on the user's Plus account.
The feature has been automatically turned on for all English-language searches made by users logged into Google. Turning off the personal results permanently will require changing a setting in Google's personal preferences.
The personal results can also be excluded on a search-by-search basis by clicking on an icon of the globe on the results page (the personal results will be denoted by a button featuring a human's silhouette).
Searches on general topics such as 'music' and 'sports,' will generate suggestions on people and companies that have Plus accounts. ( dailymail.co.uk )
No comments:
Post a Comment