iPhone Generates Two-Thirds of Google's Mobile Traffic
Current employee of Google Suzanne Michel, at Senate Judiciary hearings yesterday, stated that two-thirds of Google's mobile search comes from Apple iOS devices.
Michel also told Senate members that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all made bids to become the default search engine on iOS’s Mobile Safari Web Browser. Google was ultimately selected, and some say that Apple receives substantial revenue from the search engine's services.
The web browser market share is said to include a large number of iPad's and other mobile Apple devices.
Eric Schimdt, chairman of Google, also sat in front of the U.S. Senate yesterday and defended the search giant's search result practices.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel felt that Google is now such a powerful entity on the Internet that it could also become a detriment to competing search sites. Republican Senator Mike Lee offered his thoughts on the matter at hand: "Google is in a position to determine who will succeed and who will fail on the internet. In the words of the head of the Google's search ranking team, Google is the biggest kingmaker on Earth."
During the proceeding, Lee presented Eric Schimdt with a chart detailing a study that compared the success rate for shopping-related key word searches. Google's shopping site was shown always coming up third in the rankings, while other price comparison sites came in at varied placements.
Lee told Schimdt that Google was "magically coming up third every time. I don't know whether you call this a separate algorithm or whether you've reverse engineered one algorithm, but either way you've cooked it, so that you're always third."
Schimdt made sure to respond to the senator by saying, "Senator, may I simply say that I can assure you we've not cooked anything."
Google was also accused of using its market dominance to undercut competition in mobile apps and aiding illegal online pharmacies in purchasing ads.
Schmidt was said to have provided unclear and "fuzzy" answers to the Senate members' previous questions.
