科技英语新闻:Google to face Senate antitrust grilling

BEIJING, Sept. 20 (Xinhuanet)-- Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt is to face a Senate hearing on whether the company is abusing its dominance in Internet search, according to media reports on Tuesday.

At the Wednesday's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, Schmidt will argue that critics are wrong to say Google gives preference to its own products, instead, Google is just trying to deliver the best-cultivated search results for users.

The issue of search ranking is a touchy subject with Google, which says its algorithm is devised to give users the most useful result so they will come back.

Another focal point of the hearing, which Schmidt concerned most is "scrapers", those who game its search algorithm, for example, taking commonly searched words, combine them into a nonsensical block of text and throw it up on the Web to grab eyeballs and advertising dollars.

Google believes that, if scrapers succeed too often, consumers will lose confidence in search and turn to other resources, thus posing an existential threat to the company.

Regulators in the U.S. and abroad have been looking into various aspects of Google's business practices since the company's 2007 purchase of ad firm DoubleClick.

At the moment, European regulators are conducting an antitrust inquiry into Google's search business while the Federal Trade Commission is doing likewise.

Google relies overwhelmingly on its core product, Internet search, and dominates the market for that product.

It handles around two-thirds of U.S. Internet searches and more than 80 percent in many European countries, according to comScore Inc.