Expedia's Barry Diller Calls on Google to Be Regulated

Federal antitrust regulators should keep an eye on Google's travel practices. That summarizes the sentiments of Barry Diller, the chairman and senior executive of Expedia Group and IAC/InterActiveCorp. Diller spoke Tuesday with CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin at a talk at the Economic Club of New York — first reported by NBC News's Claire Atkinson. "Google and Facebook own basically the advertising business worldwide," Diller said. "Google certainly has a monopoly [on search volumes and digital ad sales] in Western Europe." "Whenever you have that kind of control over the world that can't go anyplace else to get their stuff to a consumer, inevitably all monopolies behave the same, and you have got to have regulation of what they do once they get to that stage," Diller said. What would Diller do? How would he regulate Google? "I would stop them from going into businesses that compete with their own advertisers," Diller said. He added: "As for instance, Expedia Group spends $3.5 billion a year on Google advertising. And they, on the other side, where it used to be some of that traffic came free." In recent years, Google has downplayed travel companies' organic results and emphasized its own offerings, such as Google Hotels and G