• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 3, 2013

The Federal Trade Commission has cleared Google of violating antitrust laws by promoting its own services in its search results.

Chairman Jon Leibowitz said on Thursday that the agency found that Google's primary reason for touting its own offerings in the search results was "to improve the user experience," as opposed to harming potential competitors.

"While Google’s prominent display of its own vertical search results on its search results page had the effect in some cases of pushing other results 'below the fold,' the evidence suggests that Google’s primary goal in introducing this content was to quickly answer, and better satisfy, its users’ search queries by providing directly relevant information," the agency added in a four-page statement about Google's search practices.