Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee exhort the Federal Trade Commission to look closely at Google's search business practices, something the FTC has been doing for several months.
Like a pit bull with a porterhouse steak, U.S. senators
have latched on to the notion of Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) as a company whose search
business is having a deleterious impact on fair competition in search and
Internet commerce.
Sens. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., and Mike Lee, R-Utah,
chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, Dec. 19
sent
this letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Liebowitz airing concerns
over Google's business practices and its impact on competition in Internet
search and commerce.
Kohl and Lee stopped short of claiming Google violated
antitrust laws and the FTC Act. Even so, the senators asked the FTC, which is
already scrutinizing Google for the same antitrust concerns, for a full, formal
antitrust probe into Google's business conduct.
The senators' message is nothing new. Kohl and Lee had
earlier
called Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on the congressional carpet on
Capitol Hill Sept. 21 to answer claims that the search engine giant unfairly
favors its search results over rivals such as Yelp and Expedia.
The new letter seems to be a parting shot at Google as
the company heads into 2012, with its
65 percent U.S. search share still very
much intact. The senators clearly want to impress upon the FTC to look into the
issues they and their fellow Congress members broached at their hearing to
determine whether Google violated antitrust laws.
"We believe these allegations regarding Google's
search engine practices raise important competition issues," Kohl and Lee
wrote to the FTC. "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."
Google isn't taking the complaint personally, telling
eWEEK:
"These letters are customary, and we appreciate that the committee
reserved judgment as we continue to cooperate with the FTC. We are committed to
competing fairly on the Internet's level playing field."
While several members of Congress grilled Schmidt at the
hearing in September, Kohl and Lee were especially critical. Lee accused Google
of cooking its search results to favor its own Web services over results for Yelp, Expedia, Nextag and others.
Schmidt coolly replied that "we've
not cooked anything." Schmidt also said that Google learned from convicted
monopolist Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).
"We get it. By that, I mean that we get the lessons
of our corporate predecessors," Schmidt said in his oral testimony,
without naming Microsoft. "What we ask is that you help us ensure that the
Federal Trade Commission's inquiry remains a focused and fair process, so that
we can continue creating jobs and building products that delight our
users."
Interestingly, Rick Rule, a partner at Cadwalader,
Wickersham & Taft LLP and outside counsel to Microsoft, applauded Kohl and
Lee's letter to the FTC. Rule, who headed the Department of Justice's antitrust division from 1985
to 1989, said:
"Senator Lee is right to call for careful scrutiny
of Google, given the numerous allegations of antitrust violations by the company. The antitrust laws of this country prohibit companies like
Google that dominate important parts of our economy from using their market
power to destroy competition and to deny consumers of choice. Decisions from
conservative courts make clear that the antitrust laws apply just as much to
the new economy as to the old. If a
company like Google is allowed to flout the rule of law, then free-market
competition will suffer."
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