Federal Trade Commission has rejected accusations that it took no legal action against Google as a result of intensive lobbying by the company. It is known that Google employees’ donations made it the 2nd-largest corporate backer in Obama’s re-election campaign three years ago.

It also became known that Google staff had lobbied the White House 230 times and that Google employs 20 separate lobbying agencies. However, the chairwoman of America’s top trade watchdog rejected all accusations that the FTC decided to cease Google investigation because of that. Two other commissioners who were serving in early 2013, when the FTC settled with Google, signed this statement.

The FTC explained that some of its own staff attorneys raised concerns about several other Google practices, but the Commission obtained commitments from the tech giant regarding certain of those practices, and Google has since abided by those commitments.

At the time, FTC officials identified risks in suing Google, but still decided that Google’s conduct has resulted in real harm to consumers, as well as to innovation in the search and advertising markets on the Internet. They also claimed that Google has strengthened its monopolies in these fields via anticompetitive means, which can have lasting negative effects on consumer welfare.

In the meantime, European officials closely watch the debate, since the EU competition commissioner must soon make a decision on whether to continue investigation into Google search practices – this probe has been lasting for 5 years now and still remains open.

Anyway, the FTC blasted suggestions that commissioners had been politically influenced, saying that media reports make a number of misleading inferences and suggestions about the investigation conducted by the Commission. The agency pointed at the recent article of the Wall Street journal, which suggested that some disparate and unrelated meetings of FTC staff and Google representatives could affect the FTC’s decision to discontinue the search investigation on Google practices two years ago. The trade watchdog claimed that not a single fact was offered to substantiate the misleading article. In response, the Journal defended its article as “careful, accurate and fair”.