{"id":97483,"date":"2020-10-26T03:46:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T00:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/google-turned-down-plea-deal-from-ftc-in-2012\/"},"modified":"2020-10-26T03:46:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T00:46:48","slug":"google-turned-down-plea-deal-from-ftc-in-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/google-turned-down-plea-deal-from-ftc-in-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"#Google turned down plea deal from FTC in 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Google turned down plea deal from FTC in 2012<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Google\u2019s high-handed tactics with US regulators have come back to haunt it, with critics saying the tech giant set the stage for a dramatic showdown with the Department of Justice nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n

The DOJ last week sued Google, accusing it of using anti-competitive tactics to maintain its search engine\u2019s dominance over rivals. The focus of the suit \u2014 massive cash payments to smartphone makers like App<\/a>le and Samsung to make Google\u2019s search engine the default option on their devices \u2014 is a fresh one.<\/p>\n

But industry sources say the Silicon Valley giant has nevertheless made itself vulnerable to a battle with the heavyweight DOJ by refusing to cooperate with lesser regulators in the past.<\/p>\n

In 2012, a Democrat-led Federal Trade Commission offered the search engine giant a plea deal over allegedly anticompetitive practices that would likely have protected it from its current legal dispute with the DOJ, sources told The Post.<\/p>\n

The FTC\u2019s offer, which has not previously been reported, came in the form of a consent agreement that carried no admission of guilt for Google if it would agree to rein in some of its controversial search practices.<\/p>\n

Those included Google\u2019s scraping of content from third-party Web sites like Yelp to use on its own platforms without linking back to those sites, and restrictions the FTC claimed Google created to prevent advertisers from doing business with rival sites, sources said.<\/p>\n

The offer \u2014 led by then-FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz, a Democrat \u2014 was soundly rejected.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle resisted everything,\u201d a source with knowledge of the events told The Post. \u201cThey said, \u2018We don\u2019t think you have the votes to sue.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jon
Jon Leibowitz, former FTC chairman.<\/span>Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed, Leibowitz didn\u2019t have the support he needed to sue. He had backing only from fellow Democratic Commissioner Julie Brill, but not from Edith Ramirez, also a Democrat, or the FTC\u2019s two Republican commissioners: Maureen Ohlhausen and Thomas Rosch, sources said.<\/p>\n

In 2013, after a two-year probe, the FTC announced that Google had agreed to changes to its scraping and ad sales policies via a nonbinding \u201ccommitment letter\u201d that gave the FTC zero authority to ensure it followed through.<\/p>\n

Had Google agreed to Leibowitz\u2019s original offer, sources say, it would have been under the FTC\u2019s jurisdiction for between seven to 10 years \u2014 a period during which Donald Trump\u2019s DOJ would have been barred from stepping on its turf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would have been smart to sign a consent decree with the FTC,\u201d a source with knowledge of the 2012 discussions told The Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a great \u2018the road not taken\u2019 story,\u201d added George Washington University Professor William Kovacic, an FTC commissioner from 2006 through 2011 who confirmed that the plea deal was offered after he left the agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the FTC had come home with a real order, that could have been seen as a much more legitimate law enforcement measure. The whole narrative of government ineffectiveness in dealing with big tech would have been different,\u201d Kovacic added, pointing to loud calls from DC to rein in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s entirely possible that emboldened Google,\u201d Kovacic said of the FTC\u2019s refusal to sue.<\/p>\n

Google, which declined to comment for this story, has vehemently denied that its practices are anticompetitive and last week blasted the DOJ\u2019s lawsuit as \u201cdeeply flawed\u201d in a blog post. The Alphabet-owned company controls 90 percent of all online searches in the US, which helps it generate $160 billion in annual sales through advertising. It says it got there by being the best search engine around.<\/p>\n

The DOJ claims it was unfairly helped along by convincing phone makers to make it the default engine, thus locking up the distribution channels. It does this through its Android operating system, which powers nine out of 10 phones, the DOJ says. It also pays Apple to make it the default search engine on the iPhone \u2014 resulting in payments to Apple of as much as $11 billion a year, or roughly one-third of Alphabet\u2019s annual profits, according to the feds.<\/p>\n

If Google tangles with the DOJ and loses, it could be forced to sever its relationship with Apple \u2014 a scenario so stark for Google that it\u2019s been labeled \u201cCode Red\u201d inside the company, prosecutors said. While Android-operated phones are more common, almost half of Google\u2019s search traffic last year came from Apple devices, the DOJ complaint said.<\/p>\n

Google, which competes against Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo, is expected to argue the efforts to slow its growth would only hurt consumers. \u201cPeople use Google because they choose to, not because they\u2019re forced to, or because they can\u2019t find alternatives,\u201d the company\u2019s senior vice president of global affairs said in a blog post last week. \u201cThis lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while the company has effectively used this argument to fend off regulators in the US and Europe for years, Seth Bloom, a longtime general<\/a> counsel for the US Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, says the DOJ could still win if it can show that Google\u2019s actions \u201care stopping other search engines from prospering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Google\u2019s monopoly in search is unquestioned,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Vega contributed to this story.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Google turned down plea deal from FTC in 2012” Google\u2019s high-handed tactics with US regulators have come back to haunt it, with critics saying the tech giant set the stage for a dramatic showdown with the Department of Justice nearly a decade ago. The DOJ last week sued Google, accusing it of using anti-competitive tactics…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/william-barr-sundar-pichai-e1603673159650.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[77111,5029,70875,26293,70514,70446],"class_list":["post-97483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-10-25-20","tag-apple","tag-ftc","tag-google","tag-justice-department","tag-lawsuits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}