MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — A Google exec has responded to a Wall Street Journal guest editorial by the CEO of comparison shopping site Nextag, who blasted the search giant for ballooning into a monopoly on Friday.
Amit Singhal, senior vice president of engineering at Google, responded to the guest editorial on Google's Public Policy Blog in a claim/fact piece titled "Setting the Record Straight: Competition in Search."
Singhal said that he wanted to set the record straight after Nextag CEO Jeffrey Katz made several inaccurate claims, "or suggests that Google start doing things that it already does."
Singhal responded to seven statements Katz had made in the Journal, telegraphing in his responses that natural search results are never influenced by payment; Google built search to help users, not websites; algorithms are always designed to give users the most relevant results; the search engine doesn't prohibit competitors from advertising on Google; and if users don’t like the results they can always move over to another search engine.
"Search is about helping people find the right answers to their questions when and where they need them," Singhal said. "We work hard every day to figure out the most useful results for our users, and we’re working to create new and better ways to answer your questions. We know that if we don’t give users the best results, people can and will switch to another search engine."