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Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Return of Anti-Trust
One of the few, legitimate, saving graces of the late Bush administration was its running of the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division. Under Democratic administrations, the DoJ likes to take strong swings at prominent hi-tech firms. Under LBJ, IBM was subject to an epic anti-trust suit that lasted so long the equipment in question, an early mainframe, was hopelessly obsolete when judgment was handed down. The Clinton years saw the persecution of Microsoft which was, we were assured at the time, on the verge of taking over the world if not stopped. With Apple resurgent, and the Internet having fundamentally changed the economy, the Obama DoJ is taking aim at the new rising giant, Google.
Last week, the Obama administration declared a sharp break with the Bush years, vowing to toughen antitrust enforcement, especially for dominant companies. The approach is closer to that of the European Union, where regulators last week fined Intel $1.45 billion for abusing its power in the chip market.
In this new climate, the stakes appear to be highest for Google, the rising power of the Internet economy.
The new antitrust leadership, legal experts say, is likely to scrutinize networks — technology platforms that become so dominant that everyone feels the need to plug into them. The advantages to the companies that control such networks snowball as they attract more users, advertisers or software developers.
Internet search and search advertising, like personal computer operating software, is one example, said Herbert Hovenkamp, an antitrust expert at the University of Iowa law school. “Google is a dominant network, as is Microsoft,” Mr. Hovenkamp said. “Networks become competitive only if everyone has the same chance.”
Posted by Richard Anderson on May 26, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
The government of Canada, in partnership with a province, should immediately make a serious offer for Google to move their operations to Canada with a legal guarantee against protection from anti-competition legislation.
Posted by: Robert Seymour | 2009-05-26 5:23:59 AM
Excellent idea. Our anti-competition laws are mostly a dead letter anyway - one of Brian Mulroney lesser known positive accomplishments.
Posted by: Publius | 2009-05-26 6:04:38 AM
Google is a left-leaning company that has donated heavily to Democratic candidates. Google's CEO was THE senior financial advisor to a guy named Obama when he ran for something called President of the United States.
I suspect Google is investigation proof until the Republicans come back into power, 20 years or so.
Posted by: John | 2009-05-26 9:19:47 PM
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