Senate questioning fails to rattle Google chief

GOOGLE HAS not cooked its search results to favour its own products and listings, executive chairman Eric Schmidt told a US Senate hearing looking into whether the internet giant abuses its power.

Members of the Senate judiciary committee’s antitrust panel said Google had grown into a dominant and potentially anti-competitive force on the internet.

“Google is in a position to determine who will succeed and who will fail on the internet,” said Republican Senator Mike Lee. “In the words of the head of Google’s search ranking team, Google is the biggest kingmaker on Earth.”

Google has been broadly accused of using its clout in the search market to stamp out rivals as it moves into related businesses, like travel search.

The online giant is attempting to convince regulators and legislators that it does not need restrictions imposed on its expanding portfolio of businesses, and that its business practices are legal and in the interests of consumers.

Senator Lee aggressively quizzed Mr Schmidt over whether Google deviates from its search algorithm to boost its own listings.

He brought a chart that showed a study comparing the success rate for shopping-related key word searches. Senator Lee said that search rankings for price comparison sites – Nextag, PriceGrabber and Shopper – varied, while Google’s shopping site consistently ranked third.

“I see you magically coming up third every time,” Senator Lee said. “I don’t know whether you call this a separate algorithm or whether you’ve reverse engineered one algorithm. But either way you’ve cooked it, so that you’re always third.”

Mr Schmidt replied: “Senator, may I simply say that I can assure you we’ve not cooked anything.”

Google controls more than two-thirds of the global search market. But Mr Schmidt argued that speciality websites – like those with restaurant reviews and travel search – give Google stiff competition.

In an oblique reference to Microsoft, which faced nearly two decades of legal scrutiny for antitrust violations, Mr Schmidt told lawmakers: “We get it. By that I mean, we get the lessons of our corporate predecessors.”

Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners, said some of the senators were “gunning hard” for Google but the executive chairman handled himself professionally. “He appeared well-coached to me,” he said. – (Reuters)