September 9th, 2008
Justice Department looking at Google closely
Yahoo and Google entered an agreement that was designed to let Google place ads on Yahoo. That would normally be fine, except that Google owns 80% of the search advertising market already, and Yahoo was in shadows of a Microsoft takeover. That made it obvious this was an attempt to thwart Microsoft’s plans, and hence became a juicy target for antitrust regulators.
And today it was reported that it appears the Justice Department is preparing a case against Google, or at least the Google-Yahoo dea. The Justice Department is gathering witnesses and issuing subpoenas for documents that could support a suit, and to top it off they have hired Sanford Litvack — the former antitrust head. It’s unclear if an investigation would be limited to the Google-Yahoo deal, or if it would cover everything including the Double Click merger or not.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out — if they are convicted of being too successful, Google’s default description of Microsoft (”convicted monopolist”) definitely won’t carry as much weight as it used to.
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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