Will we look back on 2011 as the year Google Inc. became too powerful for its own good? Evidence is mounting, at least, that the transformative corporation is straining the limits of the law on several fronts, and the public has begun to take notice. To wit:
In September, Google’s chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in a session titled “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is conducting an antitrust inquiry into the company, which already faces such an inquiry from the European Commission.
