even before it was launched. WSJ investigates:

Since Mr. Obama took office, employees of [Google] have visited the White House for meetings with senior officials about 230 times, or an average of roughly once a week… On Nov. 6, 2012, the night of Mr. Obama’s re-election, Mr. Schmidt was personally overseeing a voter-turnout software system for Mr. Obama. A few weeks later, Ms. Shelton and a senior antitrust lawyer at Google went to the White House to meet with one of Mr. Obama’s technology advisers. By the end of the month, the FTC had decided not to file an antitrust lawsuit against the company, according to the agency’s internal emails… FTC officials and Google worked to bring the investigation to a close, emails show. Messrs. Drummond and Leibowitz exchanged emails and phone calls over the year-end holidays while on family vacations and on New Year’s Eve. “At your service to close this out,” Mr. Drummond wrote to the FTC chairman on Dec. 17, 2012.

See also: Google Manipulated Search Results to Favor its Own Services Over Rivals.