Another US Senate antitrust panel will be grilling Google soon
The hearing will mainly target on Google´s ad business practices.

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GoogL) Inc's Google will be interviewed Tuesday in a hearing about its advertising business, with a special focus on whether it has abused its dominance in online advertising to drive profits. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican and chairman of the Senate Antitrust Committee, is also likely to pressure Google over allegations that the company is opaque in the pricing of advertising services, its critics complain. Lee is expected to express concern that Google may have violated U.S. antitrust laws, according to a source close to the panel. The tech giant has made a number of purchases, including DoubleClick and AdMob, to make the company the dominant player in online advertising. Google has every one of the many steps between an advertiser looking to serve an ad and a website looking to host it. The panel will hear from Don Harrison in 2012, who has taken over the lead in corporate development for Google, which is responsible for advertising partnerships with other companies. Harrison, who testifies at a time when Google has few friends in Washington, will argue that the ad tech ecosystem is crowded and competitive, with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB ) are among Google's powerful competitors, and that ad tech fees have fallen. Harrison is also expected to argue that advertising is critical to supporting free websites, including Google Search. The hearing comes at a time when the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to file a lawsuit against Google within a few weeks, according to sources familiar with the matter. Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the committee, has expressed support for the Justice Department investigation. There are also two other lawmakers on the panel who have raised questions about Google, Senators Josh Hawley, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat. Google's critics say Google uses search to point out its shopping, map and other services instead of giving neutral answers. Others claim that Google unjustifiably favors its services in Android.





