Google faces antitrust allegations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the European Union(EU), and in Texas that Google’s search engine favors its own services in search results and charges rivals higher ad rates. So when asked to testify before a US Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee Google initially refused, but now Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman has agreed to testify.
Even though the US antitrust laws were created to deal with the oil and banking industries, and not eCommerce and the Internet, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and FTC are scrutinizing Google. Claims against Google are far different that the antitrust trial and judgment against Microsoft more than decade ago for Microsoft’s monopolist behavior regarding Internet Explorer and APIs (Application Program Interfaces). Finally the DOJ monitoring of Microsoft ended in April, 2011.
The Senate hearing and investigations of the FTC, EU, and Texas will be interest to monitor.