The FTC should review how all search engines comply with...
The FTC should review how all search engines comply with the agency’s search engine paid ad disclosure guidelines, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) said in a letter to the agency dated Monday. The organization includes employees of Google…
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and is sponsored, among others, by the company, which may be the subject of a potential FTC antitrust action. “Regulating individual companies’ search algorithms is undesirable,” said the letter, signed by SEMPO President Mike Grehan, Chairman Chris Boggs, Vice President Rob Garner and Treasurer Mike Corak. Rather than regulation targeting specific companies, the FTC could update its search engine disclosure guidelines from 2002, the letter said. SEMPO includes “leaders and experts in the Search Engine/Search Marketing industry” while remaining “an unbiased third party, working from the principles of fairness and equity,” the letter’s authors wrote. The group can provide the Consumer Protection Bureau with “valuable insight … on the topic of a search engine guideline compliance review, and in presenting considerations for the transparency policy development process that might result after such a review,” the letter said. Other SEMPO sponsors include Chinese search engine Baidu and conference organizer Search Engine Strategies. The group’s board includes representatives of Razorfish, formerly owned by Microsoft, and Google, while its board of advisers includes representatives of Google rivals Facebook and Yahoo. The FTC had no comment.