FTC

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will require Western Digital to sell off assets used to manufacture desktop hard drives to a competitor as a condition of its US$4.5 billion acquisition of rival Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the agency announced.

The deal, as originally proposed, would have left Western Digital as one of two companies that control the worldwide market for desktop hard disk drives, the FTC said. The agency announced a proposed settlement allowing the deal to go forward on Monday.

Never mind the fact that most of the people you know aren’t using Google+, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is reportedly expanding its antitrust probe of Google to include scrutiny of the social networking service.

At issue is whether the company is giving preference to its own services in search results, and whether that practice violates antitrust laws, according to reports from both Bloomberg and Reuters.

A company that helps students save for college may have made them richer, but also could have opened them up to fraud.

The company, Upromise, which is owned by Sallie Mae, failed to live up to its vow to keep customers secure, which violated federal law, the FTC said Thursday in a news release announcing a settlement.