Regulator: Staff sided with us on Google case

One member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is renewing her defense of the agency’s 2012 decision not to charge Google with antitrust violations.

On Wednesday, FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, said that agency staffers had agreed with the commissioners’ unanimous decision not to file a lawsuit.

{mosads}“What that memo really said was that on the main issue, which was search, that staff — this was the Bureau of Competition staff — did not recommend that the FTC bring an enforcement action because we did not find that, on balance, the consumer was worse off,” she said during remarks at the American Enterprise Institute.

“That is the test for antitrust, is whether it hurts consumers — not whether one competitor likes it or another doesn’t,” she added.

The FTC has come under criticism in the wake of a Wall Street Journal story showing that some agency staffers urged the commission to take action on Google’s features aside from its search functions, such as by illegally restricting advertisers and copying content to improve its own website. That, paired with another story appearing to show close ties between Google and the White House, has some suspicious that the company got special treatment.

On Wednesday, Ohlhausen largely echoed the comments she and the two other current FTC commissioners who were in office during the 2012 investigation made last week in defense of their probe. 

She acknowledged that some staffers “did raise concerns about some of Google’s other practices,” but said that “we did ultimately close the investigation on that after Google offered up some voluntary commitments.”

In the wake of the reports, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who leads the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, has pledged to launch an investigation into the issue.