Google Executive Gets Grilling on Capitol Hill

Lawmakers from both parties sharply criticized Google over its dominance in advertising at a Senate hearing that showcased the arguments likely to play out if the government moves to sue the tech giant for anticompetitive practices. The senators were particularly focused on Google’s dominant position at every step in the chain of technology that connects web publishers with advertisers, and on the ways Google has used the market power it wields through its own services like search and YouTube to extend its hold over this third-party ecosystem. Several of them asked about Google’s decision to restrict access to YouTube ad inventory to those using its own ad-buying tools, as well other practices that harnessed advertisers’ hunger for YouTube to advantage Google’s ad tools. Don Harrison, Google’s president of global partnerships and corporate development, said the online advertising market was filled with competition since publishers and advertisers often use multiple services at the same time for buying and selling ads. He repeatedly mentioned that online ad prices have fallen 40% since 2010.