TypicalSurfer - 4:38 pm on Oct 15, 2012 (gmt 0)

Because if Google is doing that, then that's definitely harming consumer choice in favor of Google's own agenda. But if they can't determine that Google manually screwed Yelp over, then there is no consumer choice issue. Am i misunderstanding something?

Yelp and a few others (probably thousands if "mom and pop" were heard) have documented a drop in google referrals coinciding with the rollout of competing services from Google so that is the basis for some of what the FTC is looking into, how they did it algorithmically (decoding the algo) is not so much an issue. I probably missed the point you were making.

Of course the big omission here is that adwords is a competing property with organic serps, I think that is the big issue with "mom and pop" and consumer choice. Are they evolving the "knowledge engine" at the expense of free trade?