1.45pm ET: Google chairman Eric Schmidt is appearing before a Senate committee this afternoon.

The key issue under examination is whether Google uses its massive lead in internet search to unfairly promote its other business lines, such as YouTube, Google Books, or Google Travel.

Google is the new Microsoft, an analogy neither side likes. It dominates online search like Microsoft dominates PC software and now, like Microsoft before it, Google is being accused of shutting out competition.

The competition is on later. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, Nextag CEO Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Barnett, a lawyer for Expedia, are all expected to give Schmidt their best shot after his initial testimony.

Schmidt is due on at 2pm, and we'll have live updates throughout the hearing.

1.52pm: The fun started earlier today – there are mimes!

Consumer Watchdog, which is exactly what it says on the label, has been an outspoken critic of Google for sometime. The consumer lobby group has hired three mimes to follow people around the Dirksen Senate Office Building where Schmidt will testify wearing white track suits with Google's famous "Don't be Evil" mantra emblazoned on them. The mimes are silently tracking people just like Google does – geddit! And I thought only the French used mimes to make political points.

1.54pm: Mimes are fairly polite for Consumer Watchdog standards. The group put out a couple of videos featuring an animated Eric Schmidt as a deeply creepy ice cream truck salesman stealing children's secrets and every bit as scary as the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. "Lollipops! And all free today!"

1.57pm: Sen. Herb Kohl, chairing the meeting, has started the proceedings. Said we should recognise Google's amazing achievements but also not to

"deploy its market power to squelch competition."

Google isn't just a search engine anymore, he says. It's now a conglomerate and rivals complain it is using its size to stifle "free and fair competition."

"We need to protect the ability of the next Google to emerge."

2.08pm: Here's a link to Consumer Watchdog's latest attack on Google. It features Schmidt and Larry Page stalking a politician on his way to a public toilet – a scenario coldly calculated to worry a lot of people in Washington.

2.11pm: Schmidt speaking: "We get it. We get the lessons of our corporate predecessors."

It's all pretty obvious stuff so far. Putting consumers first. "Loyalty not lock-in." You can go elsewhere whenever you want. Yadda yadda yadda.

"One company's past is not another company's future," he says.

2.20pm: Sen. Kohl with the first question. Asks if Google's ever expanding empire means it is inevitable it will end up favouring its own businesses over rivals.

Schmidt says open internet means consumers can move anytime. "We live in constant fear that consumers will switch to other services."

2.27pm: Sen. Mike Lee asking whether how Google ranks its own information in searches.

Schmidt says: "I'm not aware of any unnecessary or strange boosts or biases" for Google services in search.

This is kinda reminding me of the banking hearings. I imagine we may see that quote again.

2.32pm: Sen. Lee accusing Google of "cooking" their search results. Always coming in third in shopping searches. He's got a chart showing how Google Products ranks in top 3 of more than 100 searches. It's magic!

2.39pm: Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do, is piling in on behalf of the tech giant on Twitter. "Gosh. When I go to a restaurant they push dishes based on their profitability. Must they be neutral in their dish listings?" he Tweets.

2.40pm: Sen. Charles Schumer just used most of the seven minutes he has been allotted to pitch for Google to invest in New York's Hudson Valley. Jeez.

2.45pm: Schmidt is being grilled on the drug ads Google got fined for recently. He's very apologetic. "It was clearly a mistake."

2.49pm: Sen. Amy Klobuchar is up now. She has just admitted to Googling her own name. She's asking about the theft of intellectual property and what Google can do that. Schmidt is describing it as a "wack-a-mole" problem. "It's a huge issue," says Schmidt. Yep. But is this really what we are here to talk about? Now she's talking about small business in Minnesota and making a pitch for Google to set up shop there. Golly. Do you think any of Google's critics might wonder if the senators are more interested in Google's cash than any problems it is causing?

3.03pm: Sen. Al Franken is on now. "I love Google," he says. Now for a bit of a kicking. Franken says he was "taken aback" by Schmidt's comments earlier. Asked if Google's searches reflect an unbiased algorithm he said, after some hesitation, "I believe so." That seemed like a pretty fuzzy answer coming from the chairman. If you don't know, who does."

3.08pm: Franken is asking about Yelp's criticism of Google. Yelp boss Jeremy Stoppelman is on later. He HATES Google - and how.

3.14pm: Sen. Richard Blumenthal is on now. Boy does he speak s l o w l y. He has also had his Google issues in the past. In May he quizzed the firm about its Google Street View cars that have been scouring the world's streets, building an online map and sparking a cottage industry for people spotting weird shots of nose pickers. nudists, corpses and the defecating. Oh - and in the process downloading a huge treasure trove of data no one gave them permission to gather including e-mail messages and passwords from unsecured private wireless networks.

Google has stopped taking any new street view pictures in Germany, where the firm ran afoul of the German's strict privacy laws. This from a nation of nudists in Birkenstocks. But we all know that Google will have the last (maniacal) laugh). As the search giant's pictures go out of date, Germany will cease to exist. The knock on effects for the Eurozone will be catastrophic.

3.17pm: Schmidt says they had "a long conversation years ago about how not to be evil" if Google became big. "We think we have done the things that would be appropriate," he says.

3.20pm: Sen. Kohl is talking about Google's role as a "gatekeeper with enormous power" over how people get news and information. "Should we be troubled by any one company, however well intended, having huge, huge influence," he asks.

Schmidt is making the argument that social media is having a larger influence on how people find information.

3.32pm: It's getting a bit hard to work out what these people are after. The senators are flip flopping all over the place. Mobile, search algorithms, bids for Google's investment. There are some real concerns here but it's about as useful as a bad Google search.

3.38pm: Eric Schmidt is free for the afternoon. Watch out for those mimes on your way out Eric. He looks very pleased with how it went - as he should because so far it's gone nowhere.

3.44pm: Thomas Barnett , anti-trust lawyer, is the first man up to bash Google. "Google doesn't get it," he says.

He's quoting Schmidt: "Managing search at our scale is a very serious barrier to entry."

They have market power. Their market power is expanding. Andoid is on more than 50% of mobile's shipped in the US today. "Is there a problem? Yes there is a problem if Google is engaged in improper conduct," says Barnett.

Barnett is setting the scene for what's to come. The internet giant's behaviour is "improper" he says - spoken like a lawyer.

3.49pm: Jeffrey Katz, CEO of Nextag is up now. Katz started working with Google 10 years ago, it was love at first sight. Sadly the honeymoon is well and truly over. "Today Google doesn't play fair," he says.

3.52pm: Katz says Google is "not a search engine anymore" it is a company that presents the information it wants you to see based on its own commercial interests, he says.

3.54pm: Jeremy Stoppelman, founder of Yelp is up now.

Not being in Google is tantamount to not existing, he says. So when Google said it wanted Yelp's reviews for free, they had to provide them. Now it's playing nicely - could that be because the government is investigating possible monopoly abuses, he asks.

There is bad blood here, of course, Google nearly bought Yelp but ended up buying rival Zagat. But it's a pretty hard hitting attack.

4.02pm: Nathan Newman, policy analyst, makes an interesting point via Twitter: "Nice to hear a business guy like Stoppelman arguing that government action can protect innovation."

4.06pm: Barnett is being asked if he believes Google is a "monopoly power". Well duh! Of course he does.

4.07pm: Susan Creighton, another anti-trust expert and a former Federal Trade Commission director, doesn't agree. She says Google doesn't have monopoly power. "It's free and instantaneous to try someone else," she says. There is no impediment to switch.

4.17pm: Stoppelman and Katz say that they wouldn't have started their businesses today. Google is too dominant.

4.26pm: Franken is asking did Google pay Apple to pay to be its default search engine on iPhones. Creighton, friend of Google, says she doesn't know. "Apple's not going to take the worst search engine."

The problem here seems to be that we think of Google as a public library but it's a public company.

4.35pm: Sen. Lee is asking what is Google worst sin and how can it be rectified. Stoppelman says it can separate its search from its own properties. Dream on Jeremy.

4.38pm: Oh dear. Franken has said "Microsoft." Eric Schmidt avoided saying the dreaded M word earlier. Franken says it's not enough to say "trust us." He asks Google's pal Creighton if there should be a technical panel to look at Google just as there was with Microsoft. Are we heading for a full on anti-trust inquiry? And not an antirust inquiry - which as my colleague Richard Adams points out would take place in room WD40.

4.45pm: Creighton, who worked on the Microsoft investigation says that with Google "changing their algorithm 500 times last year, a technical comittee would be too slow." I don't quite get why that would stop anything.

Barnett says he's very concerned about Google and that a technical panel is a good idea. But he would, wouldn't he.

And it's over. Sen. Kohl thanks everyone and says they have added "much information and light" to this "very important topic."

The whole show was a bit hit and miss, rather like the average Google search, but I doubt that this is the last time we'll see the internet search giant up before a panel in Washington.

The right, Mike Lee, and the left, Al Franken, seem to agree that Google is too big and powerful and something needs to be done.

I bet it's not the last we have heard of Franken's suggestion that Google voluntarily create "a committee of technologists" to review how Google ranks sites on its search engine "and provide assurances Google treats everyone equally."

Creighton described the suggestion as "another word for regulation." Quite so. But as Google gets ever more massive, the calls for greater regulation are going to get louder.

Thanks for reading. Bye.