Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: RIAA Scolds Google, Wants Search Algorithm Changed To Fight Online Piracy Saying that Google has a “special responsibility” to fight copyright infringement, the RIAA has issued a report card that scolds […]
US Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee are urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google unfairly favors its own properties in search results. Kohl and Lee are both members of the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee — that’s where Google’s Eric Schmidt testified in-person back in September on the same subject — and have jointly […]
Google’s universal search results — things like videos, news, images and local business listings — aren’t “separate ‘products and services’ from Google,” according to company chairman Eric Schmidt. He makes that claim, and many others, in a lengthy written response submitted today to the U.S. Senate’s antitrust subcommittee — a required follow-up to Schmidt’s in-person […]
Earlier this morning I predicted that today’s three-hour Senate subcommittee hearing on Google and competition would be more theater than fact-finding. (You can read Danny’s live blog here and here.) And while there were lots of numbers and statistics thrown around by the witnesses (many of them inaccurate) there were few new facts; it was […]
Today’s the day. Google chairman Eric Schmidt is being called on the carpet in front of a US Senate subcommittee, to talk about whether his company is a monopolistic orge. I’m here, live blogging. Fun starts at 2pm ET. NOTE: Our follow-up article, which covers the entire hearing with highlights and without live blogging typos […]
A US Senate subcommittee will conduct a hearing in September on Google’s search/business practices. The hearing, titled “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?,” will take place on September 21, 2011, at 2:00 pm ET. It appears that a webcast will be available via the Senate Judiciary Committee’s website. The witness list hasn’t […]
It turns out that Google will testify in September before the Senate Judiciary Committee Antitrust subpanel, according to The Hill. Before the formal initiation of the FTC’s antitrust investigation Google had declined to send Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt or new CEO Larry Page to testify following an informal request by the Senate subcommittee. Utah Senator […]
We’re another step closer to the US Federal Trade Commission launching an expected antitrust investigation of Google. If it does, the FTC will join the EU and Texas in doing broad investigations. But Google’s been examined for antitrust issues many times before this and mostly come through OK. Here’s our comprehensive guide to Google and […]
Bloomberg provides more evidence of a coming antitrust investigation of Google by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or Justice Department. We’ve now been hearing these kinds of statements and suggestions — from various “unnamed sources” and “people with knowledge of the matter” — for months. The Bloomberg article says that the ITA-acquisition decision could […]
Bloomberg is reporting that Ohio Attorney General (AG) Mike DeWine is the latest figure considering an antitrust investigation against Google. So is Wisconsin’s AG, but specifically around the proposed ITA acquisition. Texas is already conducting its own broad antitrust investigation against Google. Google is formally under antitrust investigation by the European Commission. In addition, Wisconsin Senator […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How Potential Clients Search For An Interactive Agency The search behavior associated with businesses trying to find an interactive agency is very different from other models that I’ve looked at in […]
Google’s perhaps inevitable encounter with a formal anti-trust inquiry in the US took a step closer yesterday. Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl, a vocal Google critic and the head of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, indicated that Google would be the subject of scrutiny by his committee in the 112th Congress. […]
Add a few US legislators to the list of parties that are airing concerns over Google’s plan to purchase air travel software provider ITA. According to All Things Digital, two US House members and the Missouri Attorney General sent letters this week to Christine Varney, US Asst. Attorney General in the Antitrust Division, to express […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google News Dropping Sites, Reviewing Inclusion Standards Google News has recently dropped “a number” of websites that it says were not meeting the company’s quality guidelines. At the same time, the […]
Citing a litany of concerns over competition, airfare, and technology, a US Senator is calling on the Justice Department to put conditions on Google’s purchase of travel software company ITA. In a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday, Senator Herb Kohl outlined a number of concerns over Google’s purchase of ITA — the independent software […]
What a day! Still trying to digest all the news about the Yahoo Microsoft search deal? So are we. While answers are still coming in, here’s what we know so far. NOTE: The deal has now been approved. See Yahoo & Microsoft Receive Go Ahead To Implement Search Deal. In a nutshell, what just happened? […]
Wired offers a fascinating, if sensational, account of the “plot” by Microsoft, its allies and its operatives to sew discontent over Google’s proposed paid search deal with Yahoo: The Plot to Kill Google. The article presents Microsoft as the driving force, along with other allies, behind an effort to stop Google’s further dominance in search […]
Rob Norman is CEO of Group M Interaction Worldwide. Perhaps then it’s appropriate that he uses the “M-word” — monopoly — in an AdAge piece about Google. Norman has been a critic of the Google-Yahoo paid search deal and has said several times that he thinks it will result in higher keyword prices.
This afternoon Yahoo confirmed that it had entered into a paid search deal with Google. That deal is described by Yahoo in its press release and by Google in a related blog post. Google takes pains in the post to insulate the deal against anti-trust claims. The renewable 10-year deal goes beyond paid search results […]
Just before New Year’s, I published a fictional look at what might happen to Google if it was forced to breakup due to government regulation. In The Search Party this week from The New Yorker, there’s a nice long look by author Ken Auletta on how such efforts to regulate Google might be developing in […]
How might Google be broken up into various companies? The story below explores the idea, in the guise of a chapter from a fictional book about how a Google break-up might have come about and the results from it. It explores the idea of a Search Engine Reform Act that breaks-up the company, as well […]
Today, US senators Herb Kohl and Orrin Hatch published a letter (PDF) urging the US Federal Trade Commission to carefully consider the proposed Google-DoubleClick deal. Sure, who doesn’t agree with a careful review? But sadly, the letter gets a lot of things wrong, which is alarming coming out of the US Senate. Or perhaps predictable. […]
Senators Urge FTC To Review Google-DoubleClick Deal Closely from SmartMoney reports Senators Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) have urged the Federal Trade Commission to closely review the details and implications of Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. In a letter written by the Senators to the FTC, they wrote: The implications of this for […]
After all the buildup to yesterday’s hearing in the US Senate on the Google-DoubleClick deal, the actual hearing itself sounded to be a bit anti-climatic. Below, a look at what was said and how it doesn’t seem like it will influence the ultimate decision by the US Federal Trade Commission one way or the other.