FTC Probes Android and Google Search

bonch writes "The FTC is investigating claims that Google prevented Android smartphone vendors from using competing services (covered previously), whether Google preferentially places its own services above others on the search results page, and whether Google scraped content from competitors for use in its own services. FTC lawyers are also asking how Android may be helping Google maintain its massive web search lead. Google denies all allegations and blames jealous rivals for the growing number of probes. The European Commission's own antitrust probe is ongoing."

Re:Finally

[zget]

It's more complex than that. Web Search now is the ultimate vendor lock, just because it's based on so much data. Data that you can't generate just by improving your algorithms. That's why Google follows what results you pick from the search results, that's why they collect so much data about keywords people use and which ones are relevant to each other and lately they even started following how much time people spend on the website Google referred people to. If user comes back to the search page quickly, it means that page was poor for the keyword that user used to do the search. So to compete with Google and improve your search engine you need at least as much of that data as Google, which you cant get because Google has a monopoly and their results are pretty good, again because they get so much data that competitors don't. The ultimate lock-in and uncompetitive position.

Re:Whatever...

[nschubach]

Unless of course your company locks down any one specific thing (from what I can tell) you cannot change your default search provider. I've tried and I keep getting a little alert box that says the default cannot be changed. I had to go into the registry to set it to Google, and that wasn't necessarily a fun task (had to get UUID for Google search, remove Bing one, etc.)

Re:Where was FCC when Bing did?

[OhHellWithIt]

I remember this very thing. When I complained to Verizon, their reply could be summarized as "Tough cookies!" When I got my new phone, all the Verizon stuff went into a folder labeled "VZ crapware", and I installed the Google apps instead.

Verizon is remarkable for their ability to annoy me just shy of the point where I will change carriers.