Google can pretty much claim victory in their fight to avoid serious anti-trust prosecution after striking a deal with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Though no official announcements have been made from any of the parties involved, credible sources including the Politico.com and SearchEngineLand.com are reporting various details of the deal.
Under the terms of the deal, the search engine giant will be making some minor changes in how third-party content is presented in snippets and pledged to make AdWords campaigns more portable across browser platforms.
Content creators like Yelp! have long complained that Google is misusing their content by presenting it in snippets.There’s no word yet on how Google intends to address the snippet issue, but an announcement is expected before Christmas.
The new deal allows Google to escape what could have been a very expensive, time-consuming antitrust case in open court. But that doesn’t mean the company is completely out of the antitrust woods. Several state governments, as well as the European Union, are still investigating various Google practices.
Critics of the company SEOs love to hate are claiming that the FTC investigation didn’t go nearly far enough in attempting to expose Google’s anti-competitive practices.
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