US Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee are reportedly urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether Internet search services provider Google, Inc., US, unfairly favours its own properties in search results.
Kohl and Lee, both members of the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, have jointly signed a five-page letter to FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz calling for ‘serious scrutiny’ of Google’s business practices. More specifically, both members have called for an investigation to see if Google is acting anti-competitively when its own properties are positioned highly in search results.
In their letter, the Senators say they ‘take no position’ on Google’s practices, but they do cite some of the arguments that were brought up by Google’s critics in the September hearing.
Given Google’s dominant market share in Internet search, any such bias would raise serious questions as to whether the company is seeking to leverage its search dominance into adjacent markets, in a manner potentially contrary to antirust law, it has been noted.
In response to similar charges, Google representatives have earlier argued that the company does not have separate products outside of its search service. However, critics point out that Google actually hosts a page titled ‘Products’, where it lists all of its offerings, including web search.
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