Nobody's calling it a bribe, but Google donated $25,000 to honor the Federal Trade Commission chairman while the agency was embroiled in an investigation into the company's alleged anti-competitive practices.
Google and its very expensive lobbying efforts may have wiggled away from the Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust investigation without major penalties a week ago, but that doesn't mean the Europeans are going to take it easy on the search giant.
Google snuck its way out of a two-year Federal Trade Commission antitrust probe without any major scratches this week in large part because it spent $25 million on lobbying Washington to believe it wasn't, in fact, being evil.
Google is getting off pretty easy: after a two-year investigation into Google's possibly anti-competitive antics, the Federal Trade Commission has ruled that Google hasn't done anything wrong, saying "evidence does not support a claim" that Google unfairly favors its own products in its search results.
Following an iPhone tracking privacy scandal earlier this year, Google will have to pay the biggest Federal Trade Commission fine ever given to a single company, which for a huge corporation like Google doesn't add up to all that much, showing how little impact even the largest fines have.
If it seems odd that a federal regulator was scooped by a sleep-deprived student, get used to it, because the federal government is often the last to know about digital invasions of your privacy.
Google still doesn't think it did anything wrong, even as the Federal Trade Commission folds its new search features that promote Google+ into its anti-trust investigations of the company.
Just two weeks, practically nobody knew what Carrier IQ was, but thanks to a viral YouTube video showing evidence that the company's software was logging keystrokes on smartphones, a growing list of federal agencies are opening investigations.
Anticipating the inevitable blowback to the Federal Trade Commission's official press release that Facebook "Deceived Consumers By Failing To Keep Privacy Promises," Mark Zuckerberg wrote a blog post.
Plus: There's suddenly reason for optimism in the NBA lockout talks
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed changes
Ashton drew FTC scrutiny after guest-editing Details. Are his tweets a problem, too?
Eric Schmidt's telling other moguls in Sun Valley that the search giant's not worried
The FTC is asking questions about Twitter's relationship with third party apps
Google's search, shopping and travel businesses are likely to be scrutinized
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