14 DAY TRIAL // Google is about to get its most intense scrutiny yet, the US Federal Trade Commission is about to send it subpoenas as part of a broad investigation into Google's core business that will start momentarily. Nothing is confirmed yet, but the Wall Street Journal and other reports are indicating that the FTC is warping up the initial procedures and will start within days, likely next week.
Google executives will be summoned by court orders to explain to the investigators anything related to Google's handling of its search engine and ranking.
The core of the investigation will focus on whether Google's dominance and behavior is an anti-trust violation. Google has about two thirds of the search market in the US and even more in other places.
That alone is a not against the law in the US, companies can maintain a de-facto monopoly as long as it has been acquired lawfully and not abused, by taking out the competition or harming the consumer in the process.
This is the largest investigation to date for Google and the first one that will center around the so-called "search neutrality" concept. Several companies, competitors in a sense, have complained that Google is abusing its position to favor its own businesses, hurting competitors in the process.
These companies claim that Google including links to its Maps, Photos, Place Pages and countless other products, above the regular search results puts everyone else at a disadvantage.
The argument is that Google does not treat its own services as it does every other website, their position is not determined by the ranking algorithm. This makes it impossible for websites to compete, no matter how well they do, they'd still be below Google's own products in the search results page.
Of course, it could be argued that Google is free to do what it wants with its search engine since it's a product it offers to users for free. Users are able to determine if the results served by Google are relevant to them or not and seek alternatives if they are not.
Of course, the only real alternative in the US is Bing, so the choice is not great. And users may not be able to determine whether a competing product is better than Google's alternative if they don't get to try it out first and rely solely on the first thing that Google sends their way.
Regardless of the merits, the investigation has the potential of harming Google significantly, even if it ends up unsuccessful. The best example of this is Microsoft, which, despite escaping most unscathed from a broad monopoly investigation was still hurt in the long run, due to the public perception and its own fear of being too competitive.