The Hill: Google chairman reveals split with lawmakers on state of search industry
By Gautham Nagesh
11/06/11
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt’s answers to questions from the Senate Antitrust subpanel reveal a stark split with committee members on the nature of the search industry, with Schmidt presenting a marketplace where Google cannot favor their own products in search results and must contend with a new wave of competitors.On Friday, the Committee released Schmidt’s answers to additional questions from his testimony before the panel in September. That hearing called by ranking member Rep. Mike Lee (R-Utah) probed Google’s influence in the industry and concerns from competitors that the search giant favors its own product offerings in search rankings.
Schmidt’s responses to the Committee’s emphasized that Google views itself not as a provider of links but as a means for consumers to find information online, regardless of what form it takes and flatly rejected limits placed on the search giant’s role as an arbiter of digital information.
In his written answers, Schmidt dismissed any differentiation between the firm’s conventional and thematic search results, which pop up when users search for stock quotes, sports scores, products and other categories.
What is crucial to understand is that thematic search results are not separate ‘products and services’ from Google. Rather, the incorporation of thematic and conventional results in universal search reflects Google’s effort to connect users to the information that is most responsive to their queries, Schmidt wrote to Rep. Lee.
Because of this, the question of whether we ‘favor’ our ‘products and services’ is based on an inaccurate premise. These universal search results are our search service—they are not some separate “Google content” that can be “favored.”
Schmidt also repeatedly argued that if at any point consumers were unhappy with Google’s presentation of information in its search results, they were free to switch to a competitor like Bing with one click.
He also said social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have emerged as serious competition for Google in recent years.
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