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<font face="sans-serif">See below about an anti-trust inquiry against
Google in the US senate... Can a small country in Africa or Asia do
such an inquiry against google today. So, whatever the US government
decides on whether Google breaks competition law or not, would by
default be applicable globally. Can US's commercial (and perhaps
social/ cultural/ political) interests not color its judgement on this
issue? Even otherwise, is such a undemocratic practice acceptable to
us, or do we simply not bother, with multistakeholder participation
being our sole agenda ? If unacceptable, what is the global governance
response to this key governance issue, and many others like this......
Do we have a response? Are we even headed in the direction where a
possible response may lie? What is civil society/ IGC's responsibility
in this regard?<br>
<br>
parminder </font>
<div class="articleLead"><br>
<h1 class="detail-title">Good Google or bad Google?</h1>
<span class="author">Steve Lohr</span>
<p>The search giant's online commerce venture is being challenged as a
conflict of interest.</p>
</div>
<p class="body">Good Google or bad Google?</p>
<p class="body">Those two headline narratives competed for credibility
in a three-hour hearing on Wednesday before a Senate antitrust panel,
which heard testimony from Google's chairman Eric E. Schmidt and
competitors of the search giant.</p>
<p class="body">Google's story: The company is zealously dedicated to
helping people find the most useful information on the Internet, and
Google's prosperity and the economic opportunity it has created for
many thousands of American businesses all flow from that high-minded
mission.</p>
<p class="body">The rivals' rebuttal: Google increasingly tilts search
results in favour of its own online commerce offerings like travel and
shopping as it bundles those services into its industry-dominant search
engine, limiting choice and stifling competition.</p>
<p class="body">The Senate hearing has been the most prominent one yet
in the debate about Google's business practices and their effect.
Antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe are investigating Google as
it steadily expands its business beyond search.</p>
<p class="body">At the start, Senator Herb Kohl, chairman of the
Judiciary's antitrust subcommittee, pointed to the potential conflict
of interest. “Is it possible,” he asked, “for Google to be both an
unbiased search engine and at the same time own a vast portfolio of
Web-based products and services?”</p>
<p class="body">Later, he suggested that the profit motive would
naturally tilt search results toward Google services. Not so, Mr.
Schmidt replied. “I'm not sure Google is a rational business trying to
maximise its own profits,” he said.</p>
<p class="body">He never mentioned Microsoft by name, but his testimony
was intended to draw a distinction between his company and the last
technology powerhouse that was investigated, sued and found to have
violated antitrust laws. That former innovator, Mr. Schmidt said, “lost
sight of what matters and Washington stepped in.”</p>
<p class="body">Google, he said, has studied that history. “We get it,”
Mr. Schmidt said. “We get the lessons of our predecessors.” Later,
circling back to that theme, he said, “One company's past needn't be
another's future.”</p>
<p class="body">Mr. Schmidt described the online economy as highly
competitive, with users “one click away” from other sources of
information. The many rivals include search engines like Microsoft's
Bing, review and listing sites like Yelp, comparison shopping sites
like Nextag, online merchants like Amazon and social networks like
Facebook. “The Internet is the ultimate level playing field,” he said.</p>
<p class="body">There were a few testy moments. Senator Mike Lee showed
a chart with the rankings for Google Product Search in hundreds of
shopping searches, compared with the rankings of three comparison
shopping sites, Nextag, Pricegrabber and Shopper. The rivals' rankings
varied widely, while Google's service was consistently ranked third.</p>
<p class="body">Mr. Schmidt first replied that the chart was an “apples
to oranges” analogy, because the Google service steers users to
specific products and is not a shopping comparison site.</p>
<p class="body">Unconvinced, Mr. Lee said, “You cooked it so you are
always No. 3.”</p>
<p class="body">Mr. Schmidt replied, his voice tightening, “Senator, I
can assure we haven't cooked anything.”</p>
<p class="body">Google's competitors testified in a second panel, after
Mr. Schmidt, an arrangement that Google requested and the subcommittee
accepted. The competitors described a different world than Mr. Schmidt
portrayed, saying Google has immense market power and uses it.</p>
<p class="body">Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive of Nextag, said
Google was “an outstanding partner to us for many years,” but the
relationship has become strained as the search company expanded.
Google's business interests, he said, conflict with its commitment to
an open-for-all Internet.</p>
<p class="body">“But what Google engineering giveth, Google marketing
taketh away,” Mr. Katz said. “Today, Google doesn't play fair. Google
rigs its results, biasing in favour of Google Shopping and against
competitors like us.”</p>
<p class="body">The issue, he said in a separate interview, is subtle
and does not affect all Google searches, mainly ones related to buying
goods or services. “When you search for ‘running shoes' or ‘digital
camera,' Google transforms itself from an independent search engine to
a commerce site,” Mr. Katz said. “But that is not what happens when you
type in a search for, say, ‘kidney dialysis.'” </p>
<p class="body">Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief of Yelp, said sites like
his have to cooperate with Google because it is the gateway to so many
users. About half of Yelp's visitors come through Google search.</p>
<p class="body">Google, Mr. Stoppelman said, folds the reviews of other
sites into its own offerings. “Google forces review websites to provide
their content for free to benefit Google's own competing product not
consumers,” he said. “Google then gives its own product preferential
treatment.”</p>
<p class="body">Under questioning, both Internet entrepreneurs were
asked, given Google's evolution, would they start their businesses
today. They would not, they said. “With Google taking so much of the
real estate, I wouldn't do it today,” Mr. Stoppelman replied.</p>
<p class="body">Mr. Katz said Google should either give competitors in
online commerce equal treatment in search results or clearly disclose
its conflict of interest.</p>
<p class="body">He punctuated his point by using the same phrasing Mr.
Schmidt did when he testified. “Level playing field, level playing
field, level playing field,” Mr. Katz said. <b>— New York Times News
Service </b></p>
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