Feds Wondered Who Funded Push to Probe Google; Watchdog Says It Took No Money from Rivals

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Byline: Jim McElhatton, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and a top FTC staffer traded emails in 2010 about whether Facebook and other tech companies were secretly funding a nonprofit group pushing hard for regulators to investigate Google Inc.

The messages, revealed in internal emails recently obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act, were exchanged as the FTC was being asked by the California-based group Consumer Watchdog to investigate Google's Street View mapping project. The project came under scrutiny after Google said it had mistakenly harvested personal data from homeowners' unsecured wireless networks.

The FTC …