There's a small mental disconnect at the beginning of this article.
The author accuses 60 Minutes of not balancing the story. But does so immediately after noting that Google refused to talk to 60 Minutes.
Sounds like 60 Minutes tried to balance it, but Google wasn't interested in or capable of providing that balance.
An alternative would have been to get industry types to try to explain Google's side of the story, but that's not usually a good idea since nobody really knows what Google is up to except Google. Anyone else is just speculating.
They might have done some investigation besides asking the competition to tell them how bad Google is. For example, instead of asking Yelp's CEO if his results should be on top, they could have run a UX study to see if non-interested people find a reordered SERP more or less useful than what Google serves. Maybe this isn't the best alternative but it seems to me it is clearly better than the path they chose.
Also, IMO the claim that 90% market penetration = abuse of monopoly power is very questionable. If the 60 Minutes team wants to run a story taking a clear position on a controversial issue, they ought to assign a team member to play the devil's advocate and point out where their key arguments are so flimsy as this. Then they can either remove or shore up these points. I don't think every news story has to give equal time to "both sides" of the story, but this story did appear to give 100% of time and thought to one side with no scrutiny about whether that side has 100% of the truth.
The author accuses 60 Minutes of not balancing the story. But does so immediately after noting that Google refused to talk to 60 Minutes.
Sounds like 60 Minutes tried to balance it, but Google wasn't interested in or capable of providing that balance.
An alternative would have been to get industry types to try to explain Google's side of the story, but that's not usually a good idea since nobody really knows what Google is up to except Google. Anyone else is just speculating.