The Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will hold antitrust-related hearings on Google coming Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. The proceeding is related to the wide-ranging FTC antitrust investigation, but still is separate from the said investigation. The hearing is titled as “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” The title is anticipated perfectly to let others assume what talks would take place at the proceedings.
The committee has announced many known personalities in the witness list, but strangely from Google’s side, there is just one representative, thought a heavy-weight Eric Schmidt. Being the lone warrior for Google, Schmidt would be trying his level best to explain Google’s attitude and methodology without getting deep into the technicality of the explanation. It seems that Schmidt wants to handle the matters all by himself as Google had agreed to send Schmidt as a witness only if he could appear alone. Schmidt’s attendance was a priority for the lawmakers, so that agreed to Google’s request. There was even a confirmation of the same form Dawn Schueller, a spokeswoman for subcommittee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)
This thought of Google has led to further criticism as solo appearance of Schmidt would go in his favor as he would be able to keep himself away from tough questions by other panelists. Google on its part was firm and did not further make any comments on Schmidt’s solo appearance, as they only said, “We’re looking forward to the hearing and answering any questions Senators may have about our business.” For the critics, one can except many to throw in their ice balls and fire balls to prove that the search engine giant has been unfairly using its market share to threaten competition.
Talking about the witness list, the announced representatives would include:
Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman
Google Inc.
Mountain View, CA
Jeff Katz
Chief Executive Officer
Nextag, Inc.
San Mateo, CA
Jeremy Stoppelman
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Yelp, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
Thomas O. Barnett
Partner
Covington & Burling LLP
Washington, DC
Susan A. Creighton
Partner
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, PC
Washington, DC
Panel I would have Schmidt, while the rest would group in for Panel II.
Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan would even be there to report the testimony details as he would be blogging in live a few excerpts. Live webcast of the proceedings can even be viewed by the antitrust geeks.
Talking about the hearing, it seems to be quite interesting as Schmidt would have Yelp CEO Stoppelman and Nextag’s Jeff Katz. Google has come in to direct competition with these two of late and they would work try to work out every single point to prove Google guilty.
FairSearch for the proceedings had a collection of facts, referred to as a “Fact Sheet”, which had a number of points showing that Google’s guilty factor can be easily proved. It even gives Google an opportunity to look at the Fact Sheet and plan for its covering on most of the points. This could in fact help Schmidt to be well-prepared before facing the questions which would be bombarded during the proceedings. The fact sheet can be viewed here.
FairSearch has even worked hard on coming up with a compilation of Google quotes which has two major questions, asking to be answered. These questions were ‘CAN GOOGLE BE TRUSTED? ‘ and ‘SHOULD GOOGLE BE TAKEN AT ITS WORD? IF SO, WHICH ONE? ‘. The quote compilation can be viewed here.
However, the professionals would carry their interests in the antitrust investigation, may it be to support Google or to prove it guilty, but the “ordinary users” would be the least concerned for the said investigation. The point to note here is still that whatever may be end result, the ordinary users would be the most affected with it.