Google is reportedly about to be served with civil subpoenas by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is expected to kick-start a broad antitrust investigation looking at whether the search engine giant has been abusing its dominance across the Web.
The report in today’s Wall Street Journal indicates that the FTC is about to send Google formal demands for information within a few days. This also means that other companies will likely receive official requests for information relating to their dealings with Google further down the line.
Whilst Google has encountered a number of antitrust investigations in recent times, inquiries have tended to focus on the mergers and acquisitions side. Hence, this is likely to be the most serious antitrust probe in the US for Google to date if the report proves true.
Nobody from Google or the FTC has commented on this as of yet.
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