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The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Senate appear to be stepping up their antitrust investigations of Google, a development that could prove perilous for the Mountain View, Calif-based company, which is already fending off a formal investigation in Europe.
The FTC is planning to serve Google with civil subpoenas as part of an examination of market power in Google's search advertising business, according to a report this morning in the Wall Street Journal.
A Google representative declined to comment on any discussions with the FTC or the possibility of a broad antitrust investigation.
Google has shed market share to Microsoft over the past year, according to data released last week by research firm Compete. It's dropped from 73.9 percent to 63.6 percent, while Microsoft's Bing has increased its market share to 17 percent.
Separately, a U.S. Senate committee probing antitrust and Internet search topics is threatening to subpoena Google CEO Larry Page or Chairman Eric Schmidt to testify on a hearing that will be held before the August recess.
These types of tussles over witness lists are commonplace: politicians know that a CEO's appearance will draw more press attention, so they tend to ask for it. But when Apple was pressed for details about location privacy by a Senate committee last month, it sent a vice president, not CEO Steve Jobs.
Google has been reluctant to provide either Page or Schmidt for the Senate antitrust subcommittee's hearing, saying other executives would be more appropriate. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the senior Republican on the panel, said yesterday he was "very disappointed in Google's response."
"We're in talks with the subcommittee and will send an executive who can best answer their questions," a Google spokesman told CNET this morning.
Google has proposed David Drummond, its senior vice president and chief legal officer, who also heads its business development and acquisition teams, as the executive best able to address the committee's concerns.
In 2007, Drummond testified before the Senate antitrust subcommittee about the antitrust implications of the Google-DoubleClick merger. A year later, he returned to the same panel to discuss a proposed advertising relationship with Yahoo, which it abandoned at the last minute over antitrust concerns.
A June 10 letter to Google from Lee and Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl, the Democratic chair of the subcommittee, said: "A hearing on this important topic would be incomplete without the direct perspective and views from one of Google's top two executives, each of whom has played a prominent role at the company throughout the last decade."
Just over a billion people worldwide visited Google in May, according to data released this week from Comscore. Microsoft was in a close second place with 905 million visitors last month, up 15 percent from a year earlier.
Disclosure: McCullagh is married to a Google employee.
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The FTC is planning to serve Google with civil subpoenas as part of an examination of market power in Google's search advertising business, according to a report this morning in the Wall Street Journal.
A Google representative declined to comment on any discussions with the FTC or the possibility of a broad antitrust investigation.
Google has shed market share to Microsoft over the past year, according to data released last week by research firm Compete. It's dropped from 73.9 percent to 63.6 percent, while Microsoft's Bing has increased its market share to 17 percent.
Separately, a U.S. Senate committee probing antitrust and Internet search topics is threatening to subpoena Google CEO Larry Page or Chairman Eric Schmidt to testify on a hearing that will be held before the August recess.
These types of tussles over witness lists are commonplace: politicians know that a CEO's appearance will draw more press attention, so they tend to ask for it. But when Apple was pressed for details about location privacy by a Senate committee last month, it sent a vice president, not CEO Steve Jobs.
Google has been reluctant to provide either Page or Schmidt for the Senate antitrust subcommittee's hearing, saying other executives would be more appropriate. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the senior Republican on the panel, said yesterday he was "very disappointed in Google's response."
"We're in talks with the subcommittee and will send an executive who can best answer their questions," a Google spokesman told CNET this morning.
Google has proposed David Drummond, its senior vice president and chief legal officer, who also heads its business development and acquisition teams, as the executive best able to address the committee's concerns.
In 2007, Drummond testified before the Senate antitrust subcommittee about the antitrust implications of the Google-DoubleClick merger. A year later, he returned to the same panel to discuss a proposed advertising relationship with Yahoo, which it abandoned at the last minute over antitrust concerns.
A June 10 letter to Google from Lee and Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl, the Democratic chair of the subcommittee, said: "A hearing on this important topic would be incomplete without the direct perspective and views from one of Google's top two executives, each of whom has played a prominent role at the company throughout the last decade."
Just over a billion people worldwide visited Google in May, according to data released this week from Comscore. Microsoft was in a close second place with 905 million visitors last month, up 15 percent from a year earlier.
Disclosure: McCullagh is married to a Google employee.
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