Top
experts on search engines told Capitol Hill staffers at an event organized by
CCIA Tuesday that there is healthy competition among search engines.
Danny
Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, a website that reports on the
online search market, said that it has never been unusual for businesses or
advertisers to complain about where they come up in search results. What is new
here he said is that businesses are arguing that their low rankings are an
antitrust issue for the government to fix.
The
panel discussion comes a day ahead of a senate antitrust hearing about whether
Google is using its position as the leader in search to harm competitors.
Sullivan
said if Google really wanted to harm competitors, users would not be able to
easily find Google’s real competitors like Facebook, Bing and Yahoo during a
Google search.
Google
is sending more traffic out to other sites than the percentage of traffic it
initially receives, Sullivan said.
George
Michie, CEO of the Rimm-Kaufman Group, which helps businesses improve their
search rankings, agreed. “The people screaming the loudest about Google’s
unfairness are companies whose only reason for existence is gaming the system.”
The
panelists explained how search used to be predominantly paid results, but
Google gained customers by designing an algorithm that examined where customers
actually clicked to find relevant information.
“We rely on search engines to make editorial judgments
rather than deliver just a bunch of spam filled key words,” New York
Law professor James Grimmelmann and author of “Search Engine Law” said.
While
Google is a big company which arguably has influence in how it organizes search
results, Grimmelmann said there is no correct way to organize the Internet.
Grimmelmann
agreed there could be antitrust issues at some point down the road “if there
was a real shakedown” of advertisers by Google. Michie agreed saying that
advertisers and businesses bid in a real time auction and as long as that is
the system, most companies see that as fair.
To view the webcast of this pane discussion, go to: http://bit.ly/nlaC4z
