According to a “Bloomberg” report (http://macte.ch/XWNV0), the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has subpoenaed Apple as part of its antitrust probe of Google, seeking info on how the computer maker uses the search engine on the iPhone and iPad.
The agency’s request for documents includes the agreements that made Google the preferred search engine on Apple’s mobile devices, according to the article quoting unnamed “people familiar with the matter.” Google rivals such as Microsoft have criticized these agreements as anticompetitive.
Google has been the default search engine for the iPhone since Apple introduced the smartphone in 2007 and on the iPad since its 2010 roll-out. The FTC is examining whether Google unfairly increases advertising rates for competitors and ranks search results to favor its own businesses, such as its social-networking site Google+.