Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Announces Sept. 21 Hearing: "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?"
Mark your calendars. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary announced today that the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will hold a hearing on Wednesday, September 21st entitled “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?”
FairSearch.org applauds the subcommittee’s Chairman Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Ranking Member Mike Lee (R-UT) for their vision and leadership in calling for Congressional scrutiny of Google’s dominance of online search and allegations that it has abused that dominance to advantage its own services and harm innovation, consumers and competition.
Congress is right to investigate these issues and to examine the threats that Google’s unchecked dominance poses to the Internet ecosystem. As Sen. Lee stated in a letter to Chairman Kohl this March, “Enforcement of the antitrust laws is especially important for sectors in which the United States has been a leader, such as the e-commerce and online advertising industries.”
FairSearch.org believes the proper enforcement of antitrust laws is a critical linchpin in the Internet’s continued role as a driving force behind the U.S. economy, and ensuring that the Internet remains a force that continues to deliver benefits to consumers and society. After all, it is competition that drives innovation and consumer benefits online.
We’ll be there for the hearing. And so will Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt – though we hear he took some convincing…
Details for the hearing:
“The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?”
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
2:00 p.m. ET
Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.