American Consumer Institute president Steve Pociask issued the following statement regarding today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding Google’s competition practices:

“At today’s hearing, Google’s Eric Schmidt denied the company has abused its dominant market and claimed that there is competition in the market space. The facts, however, do not support those claims and the comments and questions by many of the Senators today show a serious disconnect between their view and Google’s claims. Leading committee members, on both sides of the aisle, talked about Google’s “dominant market share” and called the company a “gatekeeper” of the Internet. The Senators rightly questioned the company about its dominance and its business practices. As most of us know, Google is nearly impossible for consumers to avoid on the Internet; they dominate search, search advertising, online video, mobile search and mapping. For consumers, Google controls a vast amount of their online experience and knows everything about their online experience. For businesses, Google can literally determine whether they exist in the eyes of customers online. This dominant market position has given Google a near monopoly, which it seeks to extend into other markets and this behavior merits close antitrust scrutiny

“The testimony today of smaller competitors about preferential treatment and ‘rigged’ search results illustrates the power that Google has to steer consumers to sites of their choosing, and to its own sites. An Internet where Google decides what websites we can find is a disaster for American consumers.”

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