Google is under siege from conservatives as a senior Republican demands an inquiry into its market dominance

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Stephen Lam/Reuters

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has urged the Federal Trade Commission to open a new antitrust investigation into Google.

Hatch, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, argued on Thursday in a letter to the FTC's new chairman, Joseph Simons, that Google had become "more dominant" since the competition body last investigated its conduct in 2013 without major repercussions for the firm. Hatch is a member of the Senate's antitrust committee.

In his letter, Hatch wrote that Google had greatly expanded its capabilities since 2013 and that there was still a relative lack of competition.

For example, Hatch pointed to Google's 2010 acquisition of AdMob being waved through on the expectation that Apple would compete in the advertising space. Apple exited the mobile-ad business in 2016.

"That belief never became a reality," Hatch wrote. "Instead, by many measures, Google's position throughout the ad market, publisher-side ad servers to ad exchanges to advertiser-side ad servers, has become more dominant. And Google accumulates data at essentially every step."

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Hatch cited media reports describing Google's accumulation of power, such as a May segment from "60 Minutes" on its many acquisitions, a Quartz investigation into Google's collection of location data on Android, and a Wall Street Journal report on developers reading people's Gmail messages.

Hatch wrote: "Although these reports concern different aspects of Google's business, many relate to the company's dominant position in search and accumulating vast amounts of personal data. That is why I also write to urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to reconsider the competitive effects of Google's conduct in search and digital advertising."

This isn't Hatch's first run-in with Google. In July, he criticized the search firm for promoting results that claimed he was dead.

Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

You can read Hatch's full letter here:

Google is under siege from conservatives

President Donald Trump. Win McNamee/Getty Images

The letter rounds off a tough week for Google, which has also come under fire from President Donald Trump.

The president claimed on Twitter that Google was rigging search results to favor liberal news outlets, and he incorrectly said the search company had promoted President Barack Obama's State of the Union address but not his own. Google subsequently said it had shown Trump's 2018 address, citing archived webpages to back it up.

While Trump's attacks may be ill-informed, he is nonetheless in the position to do Google serious damage. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said Silicon Valley firms such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon were "very antitrust" but wouldn't comment on breaking them up.

Other conservatives are also gunning for Google, Axios reported on Thursday. The news website quoted an unnamed Trump operative as saying Google's perceived liberal bias was getting the right wing as worked up as issues of gun control and immigration have.

"It's risen to the level of being an emotional or gut issue with conservatives, like guns/immigration," the operative told Axios. "It's an issue that's here to stay."

Okijdm on August 31st, 2018 at 15:50 UTC »

So looking at google for “monopoly” but court just upheld FCC’s decision on having one ISP in a city as “competitive”? Get the fuck outta here. This administration is bullshit and people are too partisan to see it.

Exallium on August 31st, 2018 at 14:55 UTC »

So, "market dominance" applies to Google but not Verizon, etc?

toobulkeh on August 31st, 2018 at 14:36 UTC »

Even though I 100% agree with anti-corporate breakups we haven't seen since the AT&T era, this is not why any politicians actually care.