Google faces US antitrust probe - and robot wars

Reported US antitrust investigation follows similar probes in EC and Russia

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Justice Department are reportedly launching an antitrust probe into Google's alleged use of anti-competitive practices related to the Android OS and platform.

Bloomberg reports sources close to the matter saying that the probe will investigate whether Google is giving preference to its own products and services within Android, effectively stifling competition.

The investigations have yet to establish that there is a clear case to answer.

However, the move follows similar investigations in Europe, and in Russia – which last week ruled that Google had breached the country’s competition rules by favouring its own products over those of local providers.

The Russian case was brought after local search company Yandex, which has a 50 per cent share of the local market, complained that smartphone manufacturers were not able to include its services on Android handsets.

The European Commission is investigating similar complaints, and whether Google has impeded market access to rival operating systems, and is preventing the development of competing versions of Android.

Google has responded to the EC’s investigation by saying, "We understand that with success comes scrutiny. But it's not just Google that has benefited from Android's success. The Android model has let manufacturers compete on their unique innovations. Developers can reach huge audiences and build strong businesses. And consumers now have unprecedented choice at ever-lower prices.

"We look forward to discussing these issues in more detail with the European Commission over the months ahead."

Robot wars

The antitrust investigations are not the only problems dogging Google, whose growing dominance of information access worldwide has frequently brought it into conflict with regulators, particularly in Europe.

Earlier this week, the FT reported research findings apparently showing that Google charges advertisers for views on its video platform, YouTube, even when it thinks that the ‘viewer’ is a robot.

Researchers conducted a simple experiment by uploading videos to the platform, buying advertisements that targeted those videos, and creating software bots to view the content.

According to the report, YouTube identified 125 of the 150 ‘views’ as fake, but the Adwords platform reportedly charged for 91 of the views: a clear majority, and nearly four times as many as the 25 that were identified as genuine by YouTube.

Google said, “We take invalid traffic very seriously and have invested significantly in the technology and team that keep this out of our systems. The vast majority of invalid traffic is filtered from our systems before advertisers are ever charged.”