'Net Neutrality' Coiner Tim Wu Concerned About Google Search

Columbia Law professor Tim Wu says he thinks the Federal Trade Commission or Justice Department or both should be looking anew at Google and new evidence that it has been favoring its own content in local search. That came in a Senate Antitrust Subcommittee hearing April 5 on unfair methods of competition.

The Federal Trade Commission closed an investigation into Google search in 2013. Wu agreed with that decision but based on new evidence has changed his view of the potential consumer harm. Wu said one of the challenges of the FTC's Google investigation was that there was no strong evidence at the time of consumer harm. Google made what Wu said at the time was a convincing argument that its universal search was preferred by consumers and better overall and that was one of the reasons the investigation was closed. He said that in subsequent research, he found that some of what Google was doing, particularly in local search, "in certain areas Google is manipulating its search in an anti-competitive way and I think that evidence makes a difference and I think Google is, at this point, in a different position. I think there is stronger evidence of consumer harm now."