DOJ Hires AntiTrust Lawyer For GOOG Case?
Filed Under (Web) by Andy on 09-09-2008
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I guess now we know why GOOG’s stock dropped nearly 5.5% today for it’s lowest level since March and nearly 10% in value in just the last five days. Can you say "here come the lawyers"?
From the Wall Street Journal today:
The Justice Department has quietly hired one of the nation’s best-known litigators, former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Sanford Litvack, for a possible antitrust challenge to Google Inc.’s growing power in advertising.
Mr. Litvack’s hiring is the strongest signal yet that the U.S. is preparing to take court action against Google and its search-advertising deal with Yahoo Inc. The two companies combined would account for more than 80% of U.S. online-search ads.
In other GOOG news:
- Big-money advertisers opposed to Google-Yahoo deal
- Google browser aided by Microsoft antitrust limits
- Google at 20: Top Five Predictions
- Happy 10 year googly anniversary!
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- GOOG Tricked Users With Sponsored Links
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I personally do not see this as a particularly big issue, given that all the advertisers are third party. It is not like microsoft that actually owns the product, google is more like the postal service in my mind. They just deliver information from one person to another. Granted, I would not like to see a complete monopoly, but I know that if they do something to really irritate people that they can never stop other people starting there own search engines with relatively low costs compared to trying to compete with microsoft for the OS market.