p2pnet view P2P | Advertising:- Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott wants giant online adco Google to hand over data including its formula “for setting advertising rates”, says Bloomberg News, quoting a “demand for documents by state antitrust officials”.

The investigators also want Google documents showing “‘manual overriding or altering of” search result rankings, according to Texas’s civil investigative demand”, says the story, going on >>>

State investigators also want Google documents on rivals Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and Yahoo! Inc. and complaints about purchasing and placing an ad on Google, the world’s most popular Internet search engine.

Mountain View, California-based Google said on Sept. 3 that Abbott is looking into whether the company’s business practices thwarted competition. The scope of the Texas investigation previously hasn’t been disclosed publicly.

Abbott’s demand “encompasses documents related to Google’s shopping websites Froogle, Google Product Search and Google Shopping”, says the story, continuing:

“The Texas probe is one of several antitrust investigations involving Google. The Justice Department is close to deciding whether to approve the company’s purchase of ITA Software Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that provides airline ticket information. On Feb. 9, Attorney General Chris Koster of Missouri offered to assist the Justice Department’s ITA probe.

European antitrust regulators have also “started probing Google in November for allegedly discriminating in its search results, requiring exclusivity obligations with advertising partners and abusing its dominant position by promoting its own services over those of rivals”, Bloomberg News adds.

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Bloomberg News – Texas Attorney General Seeks Google Ad Rate Formula, February 15, 2011

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Advertising, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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