The Suit Magazine

Google engaged in a three-hour debate during a hearing on Wednesday about the effectiveness of its search engine.

According to allegations, Google searches are skewed to give its own commercial interests preference in online search results.

Google’s chairperson, Eric E. Schmidt, denied this at Google’s antitrust hearing, stating, “I’m not sure Google is a rational business trying to maximize its own profits.”

Schmidt continued to compare Google to the antitrust violations Microsoft had made and said that his company wouldn’t be making that same mistake. “One company’s past needn’t be another’s future,” said Schmidt via the New York Times.

However, many in the hearing, including Nextag Chief Executive Jeffrey Katz, chief executive of Nextag, disagreed.

“But what Google engineering giveth, Google marketing taketh away,” Mr. Katz said. “Today, Google doesn’t play fair. Google rigs its results, biasing in favor of Google Shopping and against competitors like us.”

Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive of Yelp, said to the New York Times, “Google forces review Web sites to provide their content for free to benefit Google’s own competing product — not consumers,” he said. “Google then gives its own product preferential treatment.”

There is no word yet on the outcome of the hearing.

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