FTC Closes Google Antitrust Case

Greg Sterling, reporting for Search Engine Land:

Google comes away largely unscathed from the process. Once can hear the celebrations getting started in Mountain View.

The settlement has three components. Henceforth there will be no involuntary scraping of third party content for inclusion in “specialized” (vertical) Google search results (the Yelp case). Google will also enable easier exporting of AdWords campaigns to Bing and other platforms. And Google (through a consent decree) will be required to fairly license Motorola’s “standards-essential” patents and stop using them in an anti-competitive way to block rival products.

★ Thursday, 3 January 2013