The interest of U.S. regulators has been piqued by the search deal the companies Apple and Google have agreed on, a new report says.
As a result, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued a subpoena to Apple in connection to the ongoing antitrust investigation on Google.
The information comes from Bloomberg which cites two unnamed people who have knowledge on the subpoena as the sources for their report.
The point being questioned by the FTC is in connection to Google being the default search engine of Apple devices like the iPad and iPhone.
Because of this, the U.S. government arm is requesting documents that include the agreements between Google and Apple which resulted in Google as the default search engines of Apple gadgets.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg says that the FTC has also “sent subpoenas to other handset makers and wireless carriers,” one of their sources has said.
The FTC is trying to find out if Google is abusing its dominance in the search market to influence companies like Apple and gain an unfair advantage to rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing.
The U.S. FTC has sent a subpoena to Apple for documents about the agreement which made Google the default search engine for Apple’s iPhones and iPads. Image: MATEUS_27:24&25 / Flickr (CC)
Source: Bloomberg
