Google tries to avoid the regulatory noose

Google is on a charm offensive to convince governments and the general public that the Internet advertising company should not be subjected to new privacy or antitrust regulation. "When markets get regulated, creative innovation is slowed. We don't think that is a good outcome," said Eric Schmidt, chief executive. "A much better outcome is for us to use good judgement. We take what we see as the consumer interest as our guiding principle," he said. Schmidt argued that, far from abusing its huge market power, Google has benefited consumers by challenging incumbents in various markets. Google's digital copying of books, for example, came from this desire to put consumer interests first, he said. The comments appeared an oblique reference to recent news that US anti-trust authorities are making informal inquiries into some aspects of Google's settlement with publishers of the lawsuits over its BookSearch service, which makes digital copies of titles and serves selected excerpts to users in response to search queries.