14 DAY TRIAL // Google has confirmed that the US Federal Trade Commission has started an investigation of its business. It has also responded to the investigation, though it doesn't know exactly what the FTC will be focusing on. Google's response is more of a general statement than anything else, and it's not something it hasn't said before.
"Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business," Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and head of the core ranking team, confirmed that an investigation is underway.
"We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services," he added.
Singhal then says that Google doesn't know what the FTC is looking into specifically, implying that it can't provide an answer since it hasn't received anything other than an official notification that an investigation is underway.
So Google reiterates its core beliefs and values, putting the user first and providing the best answer and access to knowledge it can.
"Instant answers. New sources of knowledge. Powerful tools—all for free. In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers," Singhal says.
He then goes on to list some of the things Google does to ensure that it runs a healthy business. For one, it puts users first. The implication of this is that, the Google search results are designed to give users the best possible answer not to be 'fair' or to serve the needs of companies and websites.
Another argument is that the best answers are not always a link to a website, but they may be direct data, like weather, unit conversions, places info and so on.
Google also points out that there are competitors to its search engine and that it does nothing to prevent users from switching to them. But Google doesn't really touch on what is thought to be the object of the FTC investigation, placing its own products ahead of search results and so ahead of competitors.
Google can't argue that this is always the best answer, it can't judge whether its products are better than the competition's objectively. But the real question is whether Google has the moral or legal obligation of not pushing its own products over competitors, especially since it does not do this in the search rankings but rather through features incorporated into the search engine.