If Google doesn't own the other services they have no incentive to promote them over competitors. Those services like YouTube can handle advertising and traffic building on their own. The issues people have with Google search results would go away if the company would be split up.

Because it's Google promoting their own services over competitors and in some cases leveraging their monopoly position to illegally enter other markets. That warrants FTC investigation and sanctions.

They can't break Google Search and advertising, but they can break rest of the services like YouTube, Google Places etc, and mandate that Google Search doesn't create other services than their search engine and the advertising on it's side. That's exactly what the U.S. government should do.

Microsoft isn't the only company. Yes, they're one of them because they also run advertising network and Google has been forbidding AdWords advertisers from running same ads on Microsoft's ad network. And there are also other companies who have complained to FTC and EU.

Still their other services like YouTube and Google Places should be broken up to separate companies. Then Google would have no incentive to promote their other products in search results over other companies. Search engine + advertising could probably work together, rest of the services should be separate.

It's a big deal because Google is promoting her Google+ page, while not Facebook's. That's the whole issue.

Completely true, especially when the referrer information is sent for paid clicks. That's basically Google demanding payment if you want to get that information. That exact issue is also pointed out in this article about the supposed openness of Google along with other interesting facts.

That might be true, but completely irrelevant. They're still promoting their other services over competitors and user changing from default settings has nothing to do with it.

What does Microsoft have to do with this? They are separate companies, they can investigate both if there's some issues. It's not an either Microsoft or Google situation.

In fact now that I think of it, the best idea would be cut Google in half or more pieces. Their advertising as single company, their search engine as single company and rest of their services as single or other companies. That way the individual companies can concentrate on what they do and aren't tied to each other. Just like was suggested in Microsoft's case.

I just checked and Katy Perry's facebook profile is indexable. In fact you can find it if you write "katy perry facebook", but it's nowhere to find if you just search for her name.

Completely agree with you. One should also read this article about the supposed openness of Google, or lack of it. Google is becoming extremely aggressive in their moves, and FTC is completely correct in investigating the company.