Last September 21st, Google had an antitrust hearing which raised more speculations rather than answers. Senate leaders of the antitrust committee urged to have Google investigated regarding antitrust abuses. The chairman and top Republican on the Senate antitrust subcommittee have already asked regulators to thoroughly investigate Google’s search practices. They were concerned that the company might be bias in the search results favoring their own products or services.
Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee have sent a letter on Monday to the FTC Federal Trade Commission, who is currently conducting the investigation. The basis of these actions was the statement from Google’s Executive Marissa Mayer, last 2007. She stated that Google rank is based on popularity…”but when we rolled out Google Finance, we did put the Google link first. It seems only fair, right?” Google then follows the rank by popularity after that.
The committee is well aware of the competition between other services. Both Kohl and Lee wrote, “We are committed to ensuring that consumers benefit from robust competition in online search and that the Internet remains the source of much free-market innovation.”
During the hearing, competitors Yelp and Nextag chief executives were present. They complained that Google has been abusing its dominance as the top search engine, in expense of smaller competitors.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt testified in the hearing. And when asked whether Google “cooked” its search results on three product-comparison websites to favor Google Shopping results, he replied, “Senator … I can assure you we have not cooked anything.”
The U.S. government has not brought any antitrust charges against the company yet. But we are all awaiting for the results and hope they draw a just conclusion.
View full letter HERE.
Watch video HERE.
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