Texas Probes Google's Search Engine

(Wall Street Journal) - Google said Friday the Texas Attorney General is conducting an antitrust review of the web giant's core search engine business, another sign of growing government scrutiny of the company.

In a blog post Friday, Don Harrison, a deputy general counsel at Google, said Texas' top prosecutor has inquired about allegations by several small companies that Google unfairly demoted their ranking in search results or the placement of their advertisements on the search engine.

"We look forward to answering their questions because we're confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users," Harrison said.

Harrison said Google is sometimes asked about the fairness of the search engine and why some websites are ranked higher than others.

"Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it's unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking," he said.

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