Google's Schmidt prepared for anti-competition US Senate hearing

Google executive chairman and former chief executive Eric Schmidt is to appear before Congress on Wednesday in an attempt to dispel accusations that the company abuses its dominant position in the search market to promote its own services over those of rivals.

The session, entitled The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?, will also hear from the chief executives of listing site Yelp and price comparison firm Nextag, who will put forward their complaints.

A written statement by Google that will be submitted at the hearing, seen by The New York Times, argues that the company strives only to serve its customers as best it can.

"Keeping up requires constant investment and innovation and, if Google fails in this effort, users can and will switch. The cost of going elsewhere is zero, and users can and do use other sources to find the information they want," the document reads.

Google declined to comment ahead of the hearing.

Robin Fry, a lawyer at Beachcroft LLP, told V3 that it is not surprising Google is being scrutinised by regulators given its dominance in the search market.

"Although it's a tech company, much of its future success will come from being able to skilfully balance political lobbying and aggressive litigation while choosing, in some cases, to risk heavy anti-trust fines," he said.

"Google will inevitably be spending more time at Senate and European Commission hearings over the next few years."

Google's growing dominance has been of concern to many in the US for some time. One US consumer group has even called on the government to break up Google services such as YouTube and Gmail into separate entities.

The case echoes the 1998 grilling of Bill Gates, who was Microsoft chief executive at the time, over concerns that the company was abusing its near monopoly in the operating system market to stifle its rivals.

Google is also facing similar hearings by the European Commission, which has received evidence from several notable rivals including Microsoft.

Joaquín Almunia, EC vice president of competition policy, revealed last week that  investigations into Google's practices are still ongoing.