The Google Files: Four things the documents reveal

The Obama-era Federal Trade Commission spent 19 months investigating Google over allegations that it violated antitrust laws by favoring its own products over rivals’ in search results. The agency ultimately voted against taking action, saying changes Google made to its search algorithm gave consumers better results and therefore didn’t unfairly harm competitors. That conclusion underplays what the FTC’s staff found during the probe. In 312 pages of documents, the vast majority never publicly released, staffers outlined evidence that Google had taken numerous steps to ensure it would continue to dominate the market — including emerging arenas such as mobile search and targeted advertising. FTC staff urged the agency’s five commissioners to sue Google for signing exclusive contracts with Apple and the major wireless carriers that made sure the company’s search engine came pre-installed on smartphones. But the commissioners closed that part of the probe without taking action or publicly disclosing it. Nearly eight years later, those contracts were a major part of an antitrust suit that the Justice Department and 11 states filed against Google in October 2020.