Is Google Running a Rigged Game?

Google dominates the U.S. Web-search market. The company has gone head to head against Apple for dominance in the mobile smartphone arena, and it continues to fight Microsoft in the search, browser and even the desktop operating system markets.

But last week Google went face to face with a new rival: the United States government. 

Several U.S. senators have accused the search giant of anti-competitive behavior. And this isn’t a case of partisan politics either, since lawmakers from both parties have made the accusations. Last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was called before the antitrust sub-committee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which includes five Democrats and three Republicans.

The title of the hearing is self-explanatory: “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?”

The Senators concerned about Google's market dominance have come out swinging. PC World reported that when Schmidt told the committee, “Not every website can come out on top. For every winner, there’s a loser,” Blumenthal countered that Google appeared to be running a horse race where it owned all of the contestants: “Your horses seem to be winning.”

Is there proof that Google gives special treatment in its search results to some sites at the expense of others? Well, this is where things get interesting.

One example: Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) might not be on the committee, but if you do a search for the honorable gentleman from the Keystone State you might be surprised what comes up. He’s running for president so you’d think his official site would show up at the top of the rankings – as it does on both Yahoo and Bing.

On Google, however, a pornographic site that mocks the former Senator comes up as the top result. Santorum's official site ranks fourth in the results, and I think that's a head-scratcher.

Surely the mocking porn site can’t be drawing better traffic than a man running for President, could it? Adding to the mystery; it also has been reported that Santorum and his campaign have trieda -- apparently in vain -- to have those results adjusted.

Santorum even suspects something is up, telling Politico.com, “If something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it.” When asked at the hearings about this particular search result Schmidt only said he couldn’t say for sure if the rankings were unbiased.

But this isn’t merely about rankings of public figures or adult-oriented websites. According to the PC World story, “executives with consumer review site Yelp and comparison shopping site Nextag told senators that Google’s search practices are hurting their business.”

Jeff Katz, CEO of Nextag, even claimed that Google has in essence copied other services while creating its own site, and yet 65 percent of Nextag’s search results actually come from Google.

Now in fairness Google and Yelp were partners for years, so it wouldn't be a shock to discover that Google saw -- and copied -- what it liked. In business as in life, imitation is a form of flattery (at least until it turns into a copyright violation).

Even Schmidt seemed to admit that Google has attained what looks a lot like a monopoly in the Internet search category. The issue is now whether Google is using that monopoly to steer its users not only to the sites it chooses (as in the example I mentioned above) also whether it is directing users to its other online services rather than those of its rivals.

Katz was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying, “Today, Google doesn’t play fair. Google rigs its results, biasing in favor of Google Shopping and against competitors like us.”

Maybe Katz should talk to Santorum. They might have a lot to discuss.