US Senate to Investigate Google for Antitrust Issues

[trinorthlighting]

Google's dominance in Internet search are among the issues the Senate's leading legislator on antitrust issues plans to scrutinize in the months ahead.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) specifically called out Google as a potential cause for concern. The senator in December urged the Justice Department to conduct a "careful review" of the search giant's attempted acquisition of travel search software firm ITA.

"In recent years, the dominance over Internet search of the world's largest search engine, Google, has increased and Google has increasingly sought to acquire e-commerce sites in myriad businesses," Kohl said in a news release.

Read more: [politico.com...]
Conduct a "careful review" of the search giant's attempted acquisition of travel search software firm ITA.

Closely examine allegations raised by e-commerce websites that compete with Google that they are being treated unfairly in search ranking

[edited by: tedster at 9:11 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2011]
[edit reason] extend the quotation [/edit]

[Whitey]

I have a related question over transparency : [webmasterworld.com...]

[StoutFiles]

I thought Apple and their App Store was the hot topic for a unfair monopoly right now?

If YouTube's business model can be allowed to continue (profit off mostly copyrighted items while claiming ignorance) then I can't see how there's a chance in hell that the Senate will change anything about how Google operates.

[loner]

If YouTube's business model can be allowed to continue (profit off mostly copyrighted items while claiming ignorance) then I can't see how there's a chance in hell that the Senate will change anything about how Google operates.

Think of it like this is how the Senate puts its rubber stamp of approval (pwned) on what they do.

[tedster]

Economist Milton Friedman said it very well: "Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."

That's the challenge. The Senate itself is not exempt from Friedman's observation. If anything, there is more self-interest there than at Google.

[StupidScript]

I agree with Tedster. The danger lies with Congress ... not so much Google.
After all ... Google only wants money.

[scooterdude]

in most countries of the world people thirst for Democracy, people defend their democratic institutions against all commers, sometimes at great cost

And in the west to date, these institutions have , inspite of problems, delivered , contrast with the rest of the world

Its great that the fine men and women elected to represent us have a fine record of commitment to the well being of their electorate nothwithstanding the problems that await them

Perhaps messers Adams, Jefferson,Lincoln, and their non US counter parts have set a sufficiently splendid example for their successors

[Shaddows]

I said this in a private forum a couple of weeks ago: There has never been a company in the history of public markets that has yielded so much unchecked power over unrelated companies' revenues as Google does now with 80%+ market share for organic search in the US.

It's not anti-trust because monopolistic control isn't exerted over Google's customers in the case of organic search. It's something we haven't seen before. Unfortunately the real issue is likely to be lost on most politicians.

Combining this excellent point with Insider Trading, whats to stop individual Quality Team or Spam Team members selecting specific sites as paradigms or exemplars of either best or worst practice in their day job, then investing or shorting on their own time?

I mean, it would take a while for the coding to go live, and the TOTAL lack of trasparency would make it impossible to suggest there was any insider knowledge.

[Reno]

...then investing or shorting on their own time ... and the TOTAL lack of trasparency would make it impossible...

This is certainly an interesting POV that never occured to me ~ I'd love to hear what MC would say in response? They do have the power, and it's hard to imagine that they can monitor the private investing strategies of their employees, so their people would have an edge to secretly profit, either directly or indirectly.

.................

[mhansen]

I'm sure Google is looking for a location for a data center in Wisconsin as we speak.

Nail head... meet the hammer!

I think it's just a show to silence smaller people like us, and the BIG corporations who have been on the losing end of algo changes and manual interventions lately. (For the sake of disclosure, mayday hurt us, panda helped us)

I'm sure there is a beatty-eyed bean counter hiding in a back room somewhere within the beltway, that can extrapolate the exact amount of future lobbying and campaign funds that will be a direct result of this action, just as you or I can effectively calculate the number of pageviews it takes to maintain our businesses.

Google is deep in bed with the US Gov't...