Schmidt argues that Google hasn't "cooked" any results

Sep 22, 2011 09:00 GMT  ·  By

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt survived a three-hour senate hearing questioning whether Google is a monopoly and whether it abuses its position.

Overall, Schmidt handled the hearing quite well, but, then again, this is his natural habitat and it's what he's focusing on in his new position as Executive Chairman of Google.

Senators didn't really bring anything new to the table, asked or accused Google of something we haven't heard before.

The main narrative was that Google had a dominant position and that it was favoring its own properties in the results over competitors.

The concern was that, seeing as Google had a lot of products that provide information and services, how could anyone be sure that the company was not, unfairly, positioning its products above those of competitors.

Schmidt main argument was that Google wanted to provide the best answers to its users and that some times the best answers came from its own products or from direct information rather than a list of search results.

Google Maps came up as an example. Schmidt said that users want a map to be included in the results page for certain queries and that removing Google Maps from search would be a disservice to the users but also to Google since its competitors, Bing, obviously, were not required to do the same.

The most aggressive argument against Google came from Utah Republican Mike Lee who came prepared with a chart which indicated that, for hundreds of searches, Google's product search would come up as the third result, consistently, while the competition ranked all over the place.

To this Schmidt answered that it wasn't a fair comparison since Google provided a product page, with info on the specific product, reviews, links to shops and so on, while the 'competition' cited by the Senator were product comparison sites.

That didn't persuade Lee who said "You're magically coming up third. Somehow you have a magnetic attraction to the number 3." He added " you’ve cooked it so you’re always third."

To this Schmidt replied, "Senator, may I simply say that I can assure you we've not cooked anything."

Overall, one notion that became apparent was that Senators believed Google meddled with its search results or that it was being unfair to other companies.

But, Google doesn't have to be fair to other companies, it provides a service for its users and it does what's best for them and not what's best for the competition, even if this means Google has an unfair advantage.

This was even more apparent as some of Google's biggest critics, like Yelp's CEO, argued that the company was abusing its position to compete unfairly and that Yelp would not be able to survive if it were to be launched today.

Overall, Schmidt kept his cool and the general feeling is that he held up to the scrutiny well. But the hearing doesn't really mean much, it may be good fodder for journalists, but Google has a lot more to worry about from the FTC investigation over anti-trust concerns than about Senators grilling its chairman.