Government Investigation of Google Over

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The Washington Post reports…

An aggressive lobbying campaign failed to convince a majority of the FTC’s five-member ruling board that Google was significantly harming consumers – as opposed to rival sites – and accepted concessions mainly affecting how the company displays snippets of content from other Web sites and allowing marketers to more easily move ads to rival online services. The company also accepted a binding decree limiting its ability to use patents to block products offered by competitors, mainly in the mobile device market.

The settlement will limit Google’s ability to excerpt reviews and other content from rivals – so when searching for restaurant info, for instance, you may not see a review from Yelp embedded alongside the results.

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