The Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee confirmed this week that Google's Eric Schmidt will testify before the panel on September 21.
Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, will be in the hot seat starting at 2pm that day for a hearing titled "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?" Chairman Herb Kohl will preside over the event. At this point, no additional witnesses beyond Schmidt have been announced.
Getting Schmidt to testify has been no small feat. Last month, Kohl and ranking member Mike Lee wrote to Schmidt and CEO Larry Page, urging one of them to testify at an upcoming hearing on search competition. Google offered up chief legal officer David Drummond, according to the letter, but Kohl and Lee said they "strongly prefer" to speak to Schmidt or Page because the hearing will "address fundamental questions of business operations rather than merely legal issues."
The two senators reportedly threatened to issue a subpoena to force an appearance. "We much prefer to work this out by agreement rather than needing to resort to more formal procedures," they said. After some back and forth, the subcommittee announced in early July that Schmidt had agreed to testify.
What will Schmidt discuss? Last month, Google confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission had "begun a review of our business," but did not provide details on the specific types of documents for which the FTC was asking.
The search giant is also facing questions over the competitiveness of its search engine across the pond. The debate dates back to February 2010, when Google announced that the European Commission had received complaints from three companies about "whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners." Those companies were Foundem, ejustice.fr, and Ciao! from Bing. Julia Holtz, Google's competition counsel, said at the time that two of the companies—Ciao! from Bing, a Microsoft acquisition; and Foundem—had ties to rival Microsoft. Ciao was purchased by Microsoft in 2008. In February, 1plusV, a parent company of eJustice.fr, joined the complaint, and Microsoft followed suit in March.
In the U.S., Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened an antitrust review of Google in September. Abbott is also looking into whether Google intentionally buries search results that might promote its competitors.
The committee will webcast the hearing live on its Web site.
Update 9/21: During the hearing, Schmidt denied that his company gives its own products search preference over that of its competitors, arguing that it faces major competition from rivals like Microsoft, Yelp, and others.