Google may be probed by FTC over search engine dominance

It is less than a week since Microsoft called for a European investigation

Google may face an antitrust investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Any probe would look into Google's dominance in the internet search engine market, according to a report by Bloomberg.

This news comes less than a week after Microsoft called for an antitrust investigation by the European Commission over Google's dominance in the European search engine market.

Before the FTC proceeds with any probe it is waiting for the US Department of Justice to decide whether intervention is necessary in Google's planned acquisition of airline ticketing software company ITA Software.

The acquisition allegedly has potential to limit competition in the travel-information search market.

Keith Hylton, an antitrust law professor at Boston University School of Law, said that if Google were to fight the FTC it would cost "a lot of money and time".

Google argues that consumers are not limited to its own search engine, and if they wanted to use others, there is nothing to stop them from doing so.

"Since competition is one click away on the internet, we work hard to put our users' interests first and give them the best, most relevant answers to their queries," said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman.

"We built Google for users, not web sites," he added.

In the US, Microsoft still serves a quarter of internet users with search engines Bing and Yahoo, whereas in Europe Google holds a 95 per cent share of the market.