At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Google chairman Eric Schmidt tried to put the best face on Google's business model, characteristics of the Internet as the highest level the playing field, and noted that if consumers and businesses do not like Google, the alternative is just a click away.
However, (and Google) Schmidt-step statement of the facts that have been put Google in the crosshairs of antitrust scrutiny: the company dominates Internet search, which means a business that does not rank well in Google's view of the Internet essentially become invisible and undiscoverable. Google is also accused of supporting their own sites and services in the search results above its competitors, potentially increasing its dominance in one area of online activity to suppress competition in others.
Is Google's actions violate the law? And what price the company might have to pay if the judge (and MPs) decided the company had crossed the line?
Complaints about Google's business practices are complex, but they all start with Google's dominance of Internet search. While Google has lost a little ground to competitors like Microsoft Bing, comScore showed Google with 92 percent of Americans use search engines to find information on the Internet.
Google's dominance of Internet search put the company in a unique position: If a particular site or business does not rank high in Google search results, can not effectively be found – even if a potential customer find the right products or services the site offers. Tweaking the site and content to rank higher in Google's search algorithm has spawned an entire industry, subtle dubbed "search engine optimization" or SEO, which is intended for practice use (and deceptive) mysterious search engines to rank pages and sites higher than competitors. But where a sentence that reads "search engines," we really mean Google: almost all site optimization done with the explicit purpose of increasing page rank, and if it helps the site at other search engines, it's just gravy. In fact, other search engines have to work hard to make the technique ensures that enhance Google search rankings are also working on their search engine.