As the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights continues its investigation into Google’s dominance in the internet search and advertising markets, the company is preparing to ask the committee to hold off on the hearing. In a letter sent Monday to the representatives of the subcommittee, Google policy expert Kent Walker argues that there is no “novel challenge” that warrants an investigation.
Walker’s letter cited several areas in which Google has historically played a significant role in innovation and competition, but nonetheless noted that the company has been forced to settle out of court with some companies who accused it of abusing its market position. Google is open to the Justice Department taking action against the company if “they conclude there is cause to do so.”
As we continue our oversight over Google, we’re watching very closely the potential for political interference. Read the Chairman’s letter in full. — Rep. Greg Walden (@RepGregWalden) February 20, 2018
By ending up in Congress’ crosshairs, the search engine giant is once again joining the ranks of a small list of companies which have faced congressional scrutiny in recent years, with the most notable being Facebook, whose misuse of private data was one of the issues brought up by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Considering the subcommittee’s significant power, the question is whether the hearings will once again be an opportunity for legislators to get tough on a company with long-standing ties to the Republican Party. Nor is the hearings their first encounters with Google. In 2010, Congress held a hearing into whether Google was abusing its market position. This was seven years after Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, received “Government of the Internet” and “People to Watch in the Communications Industry” awards from the Internet Innovation Alliance. It was three years after Google was kicked out of the White House’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
“Google’s history demonstrates the co-optation of the regulatory process by companies that put competing interests above those of the American people,” Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., wrote to the subcommittee, which will hold the next hearing in March. “Google has engaged in a relentless effort to improve its search engine, convincing regulators to loosen the scope of antitrust regulation over search engine activities.”
In 2016, the company did agree to a settlement with the Justice Department. Under that agreement, the company agreed to pay $500 million to resolve allegations that it had submitted millions of fake webpages to its web search engine. But as the Reuters news service pointed out, the fine was less than one quarter of the amount the company took in from its mobile advertising business.
The issue of whether the internet giant should be broken up is also central to the subcommittee’s inquiry. If the Committee, as is expected, finds that Google is in violation of antitrust law, it could argue that the company should be broken up, in effect reimposing a franchise of the 20th century on the internet, and placing the company in the middle of the landscape once again. Google, for its part, has sought to play down the possibility of a breakup, with Andrew Noyes, a spokesperson for the company, promising to defend its model and saying that policymakers should “focus their energies on creating competition for people’s time online.”
Read the full letter from Walker here.
Read the letter from Google below.