The US Federal Trade Commission is set to launch a formal investigation into whether Google abused its dominant position in the online search market. People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the FTC has been informally questioning the company and industry players for several months already and will issue within days civil subpoenas to launch the formal probe. The investigation is expected to include whether Google searches unfairly steer users to the company's own network of services at the expense of rival providers. Some companies complain about the way that Google ranks its own services in its "natural" search results, or the amount it charges them for placing ads, claiming its market power gives it the ability to determine whether businesses succeed or fail. Fairsearch.org, a group representing several Google critics, including Microsoft, Expedia, Kayak.com and Sabre Holdings, accused Google of unfair practices such as using other companies' content without their permission, deceptive display of search results, manipulation of search results to favor Google's products, and buying up competitive threats to its dominance. Google, which handles about two-thirds of all US web searches according to comScore, has denied doing any of these things and argues that users can easily navigate to other choices on the web. In November, the European Commission opened its own formal investigation into allegations by several companies including Microsoft that Google had violated European competition laws. The Texas attorney general has also opened a probe, and the attorneys general of New York, California and Ohio have started preliminary probes of the company, according to the paper's sources.
