U.S. Is Expected to Extend Google Antitrust Inquiry

The agency’s chairman, Jon Leibowitz, has consistently said that the commission was aiming to finish its inquiry by the end of 2012, and all signs have been pointing to an imminent settlement, including reports of a Google proposal to avoid formal punishment by promising to change some of its practices.

Two people who have been briefed on the investigation said that some commissioners had asked for more time to consider possible penalties after recent reports portrayed Google as having persuaded the F.T.C. to give the company little more than a slap on the wrist.

For almost two years, the F.T.C. has been studying whether Google’s dominant search engine intentionally produces search results that favor its own commerce and other services. Companies with competing search engines as well as commercial sites that specialize in airline ticket information or shopping have complained that Google has stifled competition by its actions.

Those competitors have reacted with outrage over the last week to reports that the F.T.C. planned not to file charges of antitrust violations or unfair competition. The commission was prepared to accept Google’s written assurances that it would alter some practices related to search, according to the reports. The F.T.C. could enforce compliance with such a written assurance.

Google’s competitors, which have been urging regulators to take action, stepped up their protests after the recent reports. That outrage has apparently reverberated in the halls of the commission, where displeasure has grown at the portrayals of the commission as having been cowed by the technology giant.

The people who have been briefed on the investigation said that the F.T.C. would most likely conclude its effort in early to mid-January.

The commission is also continuing its look at whether Google abused its control of certain patents concerning mobile phone technology.

Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman, said the company would “continue to work cooperatively with the Federal Trade Commission and are happy to answer any questions they may have.” An F.T.C. representative declined to comment.

Google will also apparently be extending into 2013 a parallel three-year inquiry in Europe, but with hope of avoiding a big fine or a finding of wrongdoing.

After meeting with Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, the European Union’s competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, said in a statement Tuesday that “we have substantially reduced our differences.”

“I now expect Google to come forward with a detailed commitment text in January 2013,” Mr. Almunia said.

Mr. Almunia is also focusing on whether Google’s search engine thwarted competition by favoring the company’s services in presenting results of search queries.

He said Tuesday that in their discussion, the company indicated it would change “the way in which Google’s vertical search services are displayed within general search results as compared to services of competitors.”

The other areas in which Mr. Almunia said he expected to reach a deal included how Google uses and displays content from other companies in its search tool, and the restrictions that Google places on advertising and advertisers. Any concessions Google offered would be tested in the marketplace to assess their acceptability to other companies, before becoming binding, Mr. Almunia said.

If there is a settlement, Google will avoid a possible fine of as much as 10 percent of its annual global revenue, about $37.9 billion last year. It would also avoid a guilty finding that could restrict its activities in Europe. “We continue to work cooperatively with the commission,” Al Verney, a Google spokesman in Brussels, said.

Exactly what concessions on search services Mr. Almunia can wring from Google remained an open question Tuesday, though antitrust specialists agreed that he had more leverage than his American counterparts.

While Google is the dominant search engine in the United States, it holds even greater sway in Europe, accounting for more than 90 percent of searches in a number of large markets. That is one factor giving the Europeans greater leverage in trying to set rules on how Google ranks competing services.

Another factor is European antitrust law, which has long given competitors more protection than United States law provides.

Antitrust law in Europe, and the commission’s approach to it, has shifted in recent years, raising the hurdles for complainants against dominant companies, said Emanuela Lecchi, an antitrust lawyer in London with Watson, Farley & Williams.

Even so, Ms. Lecchi said, Europe still offers rivals greater protection.

Edward Wyatt reported from Washington and James Kanter from Brussels. Steve Lohr contributed reporting from New York.

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Obama Expected to Name Kerry as Secretary of State

But the announcement will be delayed, at least until later this week and maybe beyond, because of the Connecticut school shooting and what one official called “some discomfort” with the idea of Mr. Obama’s announcing a national security team in which the top posts are almost exclusively held by white men.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, who is black and was considered Mr. Obama’s leading candidate for the job, withdrew her name from consideration last week after opposition to her nomination grew in the Senate.

For Mr. Kerry, 69, the appointment would fulfill an ambition that dates back many years. He had hoped for the post when Mr. Obama was first elected in 2008; since then, he has shepherded the passage of a critical arms-control treaty and conducted a series of quiet missions on behalf of the president, notably at moments of crisis with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But he would be entering an administration whose primary foreign policy strategies are already set, even as it tries to use American leverage in dealing with a Middle East that is veering toward hard-line Islamist governments and an Iran that is getting perilously close to a nuclear capability.

With Ms. Rice out of the running, Mr. Kerry’s appointment “is the working presumption,” said a senior State Department official who has been preparing for the transition to a new secretary. But White House officials said the deal was not entirely done, because the lineup currently envisioned — with former Senator Chuck Hagel to head the Defense Department and the acting C.I.A. director, Michael J. Morell, likely to be named to the post permanently — looks a bit too much like national security teams of a previous era.

For Mr. Obama, a national security team led by Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hagel, and their longtime colleague in the Senate, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would be deeply experienced but also, in many ways, deeply conventional. All three came to the Senate long before Mr. Obama. All describe themselves as pragmatists rather than ideologues, and all became skeptics, then critics, of the American experiment in Iraq from the early days of the war.

Still, administration officials said, for now there are no serious candidates for the State Department job other than Mr. Kerry. He would be the first white man to serve in the post since Warren Christopher left the job in early 1997. His successors have been Madeleine K. Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Kerry’s colleagues in the Senate have said that he would sail through confirmation hearings. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, has already begun jokingly calling Mr. Kerry “Mr. Secretary.” Both men are veterans of the Vietnam War and worked together to provide President Bill Clinton with political cover to grant diplomatic recognition to Vietnam. Mr. McCain said of Mr. Kerry recently that he would most likely win a large number of Republican votes for confirmation.

The issue of the composition of Mr. Obama’s team arose anew when Ms. Rice withdrew. If she keeps her current post as ambassador to the United Nations, she will remain in Mr. Obama’s cabinet and on his national security team. She is also considered the likely successor to Thomas E. Donilon as national security adviser. But Mr. Donilon does not intend to leave that post for a year or two, his friends say, unless he is named White House chief of staff.

Michèle A. Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense for policy, remains a candidate to become the first female defense secretary. But in internal discussions, White House officials have said that the challenge of the next few years will be working with Congress to shrink the defense budget and kill some major cold war-era weapons systems. For that, Mr. Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, is seen as better able to win votes from his former colleagues.

Ms. Flournoy has also been mentioned as a possible C.I.A. director, but Mr. Morell, who ran the analysis division of the agency, is the favorite of C.I.A. officials. “Mike has been concerned about the over-militarization of the C.I.A.,” a senior military officer who has dealt with him said recently. “And so are many at the agency, who fear they have wandered too far from the job of analyzing trends and obtaining secrets.”

John Brennan, a close aide to Mr. Obama and a former agency station chief in Saudi Arabia who has directed counterterrorism activity from his basement White House office, is also a candidate for C.I.A. director. But officials note that his current post already gives him sway over all 18 intelligence agencies.

Mr. Kerry has worked hard to deepen his relationship with Mr. Obama. The president has at times considered him long-winded and a throwback to a previous generation of diplomats, aides said. But Mr. Kerry impressed Mr. Obama and Mr. Donilon when he was sent to deal with Hamid Karzai, the famously unpredictable president of Afghanistan, after Mr. Karzai’s supporters rigged a presidential election in 2009 and refused a second round of voting.

Mr. Kerry also visited Pakistan several times to try to ease recurrent tensions, including a two-week visit after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Pakistani officials tried to get Mr. Kerry to write what they called a “blood oath” that the United States would never take action to seize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Mr. Kerry found a diplomatic way out, saying the United States had no “designs” on Pakistan’s weapons.

“It meant nothing,” a member of Mr. Obama’s national security team said later. “And it solved the crisis. Quite artfully.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 18, 2012

An article on Monday about the possible nomination of Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to be secretary of state described incorrectly the time frame during which former Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, served in the Senate. Mr. Hagel, who may be named defense secretary, was elected in 1996, so he did not serve “during the cold war.”

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