The road to antitrust is paved with good intentions

In a recent blog post, Google Fellow Amit Singhal — the head of Google’s core ranking team — began the company's response to an antitrust inquiry from the Federal Trade Commission.

He reiterates several times that “using Google is a choice,” and says the company tries hard to be as competitive as possible by doing a number of things (the obvious implication being that some competitors don’t), including:

1. Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. Singhal says Google is “always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions” and advertisements “offer useful information, too.”
2. Label advertisements clearly. Google “always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results,” the blog post says, and will “continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn't.”
3. Be transparent. Singhal says Google shares “more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine.”
4. Loyalty, not lock-in. The Google post says the company believes “you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you.” (This one is probably aimed at Facebook and its refusal to let you download your contact info.)