The Wall Street Journal has acquired and published a report by The Federal Trade Commission into Google’s alleged abuse of its power, more than two years after the final verdict.
Google is believed to have allegedly stole content from rival companies such as Amazon and TripAdvisor and then threatened to remove them from its search results if they complained about it.
Google illegally took content from rival websites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to improve its own websites. Google copied Amazon’s sales rankings to rank its own items, the report said.
In its report, the FTC also said that Google was using “its monopoly power over search to extract the fruits of its rivals’ innovations.”
In 2012, the FTC started investigating Google and concluded that the company’s search engine results “boosted its own shopping, travel and local services” while intentionally lowering search rankings of competing brands, according to the FTC staff report acquired by the WSJ.
In 2013, the FTC issued its judgement into the case, and said it uncovered some “questionable behaviour,” but let Google off at the time without taking any actions against the company.
