“Does Google‘s dominant position in Internet search pose an antitrust threat?” asks the lede in a Publishers Weekly story by Andrew Albanese. The answer: Yes, according to Senator Michael Lee (R-UT), “who last week called for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee to conduct an oversight hearing on Google.”

According to the report, Lee says Google’s dominance makes for “‘myriad opportunities’ for anticompetitive behavior.” Says Lee, “Given its prominent position in the search and search advertising markets, Google in some ways acts as a gatekeeper over a variety of internet businesses…commentators have expressed concern that Google may be using its position to harm specialized or so-called vertical search sites.”

Lee also observes,

Google gathers an enormous amount of consumer information through its related products and services, including Gmail, Google Checkout, Google Books, and Google Web History. The combination of behavioral and personal information enables Google to generate consumer data that is unprecedented in scale and scope.  Antitrust enforcement may unlock beneficial competition for the protection of user privacy and avert the need for additional privacy regulation.