Investigating Whether Google Is Distorting Search Results
The Texas attorney general has opened an antitrust investigation into how Google ranks search results, the first United States case to strike at the heart of the company’s main search business.
The issue at hand — referred to as search neutrality — is whether Google manipulates results to thwart competitors and advance its own businesses. Some companies worry that Google has the power to discriminate against them by lowering their listings in search results or charging higher fees for their paid search ads.
“This whole issue of how Google treats these vertical competitors, that’s a big issue now,” said Gary L. Reback, a lawyer at Carr & Ferrell in Palo Alto, Calif., who has advised small companies that have brought antitrust cases against Google.
Google announced the inquiry by the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, on Friday after Search Engine Land, an industry blog, reported on it. Lauri Saathoff, a spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott, confirmed the existence of the investigation but declined to give more information because the review was not complete.
Don Harrison, Google’s deputy general counsel, wrote in a company blog post that Google’s responsibility is to its users, not to Web sites, and that the company’s priority was to “provide the most useful, relevant search results and ads for users.”
“Given that not every Web site can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it’s unsurprising that some less relevant, lower-quality Web sites will be unhappy with their ranking,” Mr. Harrison wrote.
In his post, he said the Texas attorney general asked the company for information about a number of companies. It listed three — Foundem, a British shopping comparison site; SourceTool, a business search directory; and myTriggers, which collects shopping links.
Foundem is involved in the European Commission’s antitrust investigation of Google. The other two sites have each brought private suits against Google; a federal judge dismissed SourceTool’s suit this year.
In the blog post, Mr. Harrison also suggested the three companies were connected to Microsoft. He pointed out that Foundem belonged to the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, a European group co-founded by Microsoft, and that SourceTool and myTriggers were clients of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the law firm that represented Microsoft on antitrust issues.
Industry analysts expect Google to continue to attract broader and deeper antitrust scrutiny as it dominates the Web search business and expands into new areas.
“We’ve got an investigation in Europe, and now we’ve got an investigation by one of our biggest state enforcement agencies,” Mr. Reback said. “The next question is, why isn’t the Department of Justice investigating this?”
There may be other companies involved in the Texas investigation, and the Department of Justice is looking at issues of search fairness related to Google’s acquisition of ITA, the flight information company. The company has also faced antitrust inquiries over advertising deals.
Google was contacted by the Texas attorney general in August, said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman on policy issues.
