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The Search Neutrality Police

The Search Neutrality Police

Three months after holding a hearing on Google’s search engine business practices, Senators Kohl and Lee have written a letter to FTC Chairman Leibowitz urging a thorough investigation of the company.  As anyone with even the remotest interest in the subject knows, the FTC has had such an investigation underway for some time now, and it is undoubtedly the most high-profile antitrust issue currently on the agency’s agenda.  Thus, the only purpose for such a letter would seem to be to apply political pressure on the agency for what is, essentially, an antitrust law enforcement matter.

Most worrisome, the letter contains hardly a mention of what is in consumers’ best interests, which should be the focus of antitrust enforcement.  Instead, while the Senators write it is not their intention to protect any specific competitor, their arguments are based on the complaints of several competitors who testified during a committee hearing they sponsored to hear those complaints.

We hope and trust that the FTC is undertaking a thorough investigation based on antitrust law as opposed to bowing to pressure from elected officials.  This will increase the likelihood of a result that is truly in the interest of consumers.

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Thomas Lenard is Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Lenard is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on telecommunications, electricity, antitrust, privacy, e-commerce and other regulatory issues. His publications include Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated?; The Digital Economy Fact Book; Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information; Competition, Innovation and the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace; and Deregulating Electricity: The Federal Role.

Before joining the Technology Policy Institute, Lenard was acting president, senior vice president for research and senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He has served in senior economics positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Trade Commission and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.

Lenard is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He can be reached at [email protected]

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