Stephen Ilagan's Blog

While reading Thursday’s issue of the Globe and Mail, one of the articles that caught my eye was the investigation by the antitrust subcommittee of the American Senate into Google possibly “abusing its dominant position to stifle rivals”. In fact, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was busy this past week testifiying to a group of US Senators, who are claiming that Google rigs its search results to have it’s products appear before competitors.

Now, my instant reaction to the article was that the Senate was wasting its time. Logically, if I were Google, of course I would list my own products and services (such as Google Shop) first on my search list. The reasoning is that I invented the search engine, after all. I am merely trying to maximize my profit by getting one step ahead of my competitors who didn’t invent search engines. Boo-hoo for them, welcome to capitalism.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized just exactly why the Senate is going through all this trouble. Google was recently involved in two substantial transactions – the purchase of Motorola and Zagat. Ever since their inception, Google has been steadily acquiring technology and internet based companies (they own YouTube, as well). What I find alarming is that given their dominance over any other search engine, Google can control what the average consumer sees on the internet. Now, coupled with the fact that Google is further expanding into other sectors (Flight and Food Reviews, to name a few), this is quite a scary thought. To the average person, an internet search is merely that – a simple search for information. Now, imagine how many internet searches on Google are run everyday. To Google, each search is becoming an opportunity for profit, not only from advertising (which was their original plan), but now from a wealth of services that the company is quickly acquiring. If you were to think of the internet as a city, you could say that Google is re-directing all roads to their companies alone. Now, that is some pretty powerful stuff. In a sense, they are becoming the Wal-Mart of internet businesses. Like Wal-Mart suffocating small businesses every time it builds one of its esteemed “supercenters”, Google is doing the same to internet businesses every time it enters a new market by purchasing another company.

Video: Google’s Schmidt denies cooking results to favour own products (via the Globe and Mail website)