14 DAY TRIAL // The threat of an antitrust lawsuit has been looming over Google for a few years now. Despite all the posturing, nothing has happened yet, though there are ongoing investigations in both the US and the EU.
In fact, the US Federal Trade Commission is saying that it's going to reach an end to its investigation, and decide whether to sue Google or not, by the end of the year.
The FTC has been looking at alleged evidence of Google's wrongdoing for many months now and, while it has been talking about legal action for a while, nothing's come out of it.
The FTC did fine Google over Safari tracking cookies, but it was unrelated to this investigation.
But that's not to say Google is off the hook, in fact, the worse may yet to come. The company is accused by competitors of using its dominance in the search market to solidify its position.
The big complaint is about "search neutrality," a ridiculous concept that says search engines should, somehow, make sure to present "objective" results that are "fair" to everyone.
Given that a search engine's job is to be subjective and say which sites are good and which aren't, inherently being "unfair" to the crappy ones, "search neutrality" is a red herring, it's all about companies like Microsoft or Yelp complaining that Google is more successful than them and that, somehow, this is unfair.
The only real issue, which again should not be for the government to decide, is whether Google gives preference to its own products to the detriment of others.
Google doesn't do this in the search results, but it does sometime showcase results from things like Google Maps, Finance and so on, on top of the organic results.
Whether this is "fair" or not is up for debate, but the fact is, Google is not a utility, it's a company that can do as it pleases with its products, as long as it doesn't deliberately mislead its users.
Even if that was the case, users have options, Bing is just as good as Google in many respects, but most people still prefer Google. Whether that's inertia or whether Google does something better is hard to say, but, in any case, it's not illegal.