Google was almost prosecuted by the US government three years ago for skewing its search results , according to a confidential report . In 2012 , experts at the US Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) who were probing the company after some of its rivals complained about Google ’ s dominance in internet search , wrote that the company was using anti-competitive tactics , to the detriment of users . The 160-page report , which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal , suggests that Google 's algorithms were biased and it was demoting competitors ' services , while putting its own at the top of search results lists . The 160 page report , which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal , suggests that Google 's algorithms were biased and it was demoting competitors ' services , while putting its own at the top of search results lists . It said that key staff members of the FTC were in favour of suing the Californian tech giant for violating antitrust rules , before the agency settled its investigation in 2013 . The internal report was written by the FTC ’ s competition bureau , which opened its investigation into internet search engines in 2011 . It said that Google ’ s 'conduct has resulted - and will result - in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets . ' The report also said that the tech company 's actions 'helped it to maintain , preserve and enhance Google ’ s monopoly position in the markets for search and search advertising ' and 'will have lasting negative effects on consumer welfare ' . Google claims its facial recognistion 'FaceNet ' system is practically perfect , getting the right person 99.96 per cent of the time . The dataset uses more than 13,000 face images from the Internet to measure how accurate the algorithms are at verifying whether two images are of the same individual . 'Our method uses a deep convolutional network trained to directly optimize the embedding itself , rather than an intermediate bottleneck layer as in previous deep learning approaches , ' the researchers say . 'To train , we use triplets of roughly aligned matching / non-matching face patches generated using a novel online triplet mining method . 'The benefit of our approach is much greater representational efficiency : we achieve state-of-the-art face recognition performance using only 128-bytes per face . 'On the widely used Labeled Faces in the Wild ( LFW ) dataset , our system achieves a new record accuracy of 99.63 % . FaceNet was trained on an enormous 260-million-image dataset and performed at an 86 percent and higher accuracy rate . It argued that the owner of the world 's number one internet search engine illegally took information from rival websites , such as Trip Advisor and Amazon , to improve its own search ranking system and placed restrictions on websites and advertisers , the BBC reported . Despite this , the FTC settled its multi-year investigation of Google in 2013 after the search giant agreed to some voluntary changes to its practices . This included allowing websites to opt out of having content included in competing search products . The Journal noted that it 's rare for commissioners not to take staff recommendations , but that another report from a different part of the agency did n't back legal action . Jon Leibowitz , who was chairman at the time , said in a statement that Google ’ s voluntary changes deliver 'more relief for American consumers faster than any other option . ' The tech firm said that the review showed the way it sorted its results did no harm to either its competitors or consumers Googling information . Google said in a statement that ‘ after an exhaustive 19-month review , covering 9 million pages of documents and many hours of testimony , the FTC staff and all five commissioner agreed that there was no need to take action on how we rank and display search results. ’ ‘ Speculation about potential consumer and competitor harm turned out to be entirely wrong. ’ A representative of the FTC said the agency had no comment on the report . Google said that the review showed the way it sorted its results did no harm to either its competitors or consumers Googling information . A picture of its headquarters in Mountain View , California is shown . Details of the report , which the Journal said were inadvertently disclosed in an open-records request , come as European antitrust regulators decide their next steps in a four-year investigation of Google . Yelp has reiterated its assertions that Google abuses its dominant position in the search market , The New York Times reported . 'This shows the FTC had direct evidence of intentional search bias by Google , ' said Luther Lowe , vice president for public policy at Yelp . 'With the FTC agreeing to a weak settlement against the recommendation of professional staff , this anti-consumer behavior has been effectively greenlighted in the United States . ' After the regulator made its decision public , Microsoft called it a missed opportunity that was 'weak and - frankly - unusual . '
Federal Trade Commission report was obtained by The Wall Street Journal . Shows Google was almost prosecuted for manipulating search results . Report suggests Google 's algorithms demoted rival services . Deal was reached in multi-year for Google to change its search rankings .