Bloomberg is reporting that Google will soon agree to a settlement over patents and a voluntary change to its search practices, hoping to bring a long-running FTC antitrust probe towards resolution.
Unnamed sources say that the FTC will soon close its investigation into Google’s potentially-skewed search results, and that Google will change some of its business practices in accordance with the deal we saw here, which means Google would make it easier to migrate ad campaigns to rival services and reduce the use of reviews from other sites. It will also apparently be settling accusations that it misused its Motorola patent portfolio in an anti-competitive way, though we don’t know the details of that settlement.
A number of probes will remain in progress. They involve patents, monopolistic behavior, and privacy issues, both in the United States and Europe.
While any deal could take some time to be officially approved, this does show a step toward resolution of some of the conflicts between Google and the FTC.
