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US authorities are getting ready to tighten the screw on Google

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

October 13, 2012 | 3 min read

Staff at the US Federal Trade Commission are preparing a recommendation that the government sue Google in what the New York Times describes as " the most far-reaching antitrust investigation of a corporation... since the case against Microsoft in the late 1990s."

Google: Happy to answer questions

The issue is whether Google manipulates search results to favour its own products, and makes it harder for competitors' products to appear prominently on a results page.

The staff recommendation is in a detailed draft memo of more than 100 pages that is being shared with the five F.T.C. commissioners, two people briefed on the inquiry told the Times.

The memo is still being edited but "fine tuning" will not alter the broad conclusions reached after the year-plus inquiry, said the two, who don't want to be identified.

Google said in a statement , “We are happy to answer any questions that regulators have about our business.”

The memo does not necessarily mean that the government will sue Google.. The search giant is effectively being prodded to reach a settlement before going to court. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., has said a final decision on whether to sue Google will be made before the end of the year

The American inquiry is moving in tandem, says the NYT, with a major antitrust investigation in Europe. The Europeans want changes in Google’s behaviour.

Joaquín Almunia, EU competition commissioner, has spoken of concerns that Google is “using its dominance in online search to foreclose rival specialised search engines and search advertisers.”

One company questioned by the F.T.C. is NexTag, a comparison shopping service now known as Wize Commerce, says the Times.

As Google has built its own shopping offerings in the last two years, NexTag says the traffic to its site from Google has fallen - by half in the last year.

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