Google Antitrust Case What Is Essay

After an eleven year investigation against Microsoft claiming it was trying to monopolize the web, the company finally settled with the Justice Department. Even though Microsoft was required to implement changes, the company maintains its dominance and has grown larger while being responsibly and adhering to the antitrust laws.

The Potential U.S. Case Against Google

An antitrust suit was filed against Google this year claiming the search giant is violating the antitrust laws. The Justice department has been looking at Google for some time now. In the fall of 2007, while Google was prepared to commit to a search ad deal with Yahoo, the justice department was planning to file suit if the deal hadn't fallen through with Yahoo.

Google is now becoming everyone's favorite antitrust target, rapidly replacing Microsoft. In February of this year a company called TradeComet.com, which operates a business-focused search service called SourceTool.com, filed an antitrust suit against Google, alleging that the much larger company engaged in illegal, predatory behavior intended to drive the smaller company out of business. They claim Google refused to stop engaging in predatory conduct to block search traffic by imposing massive, unjustified price increases (Hof).

From Google's standpoint SourceTool.com is not really a competitor of Google; it's more of a partnership. SourceTool's business concept is to run Google ads. In fact Google profits from its arrangement with SourceTool so it wouldn't be in Google's best interest to see the company go under. SourceTool.com has decided to get serious about the suit and has hired the former head of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, lawyer Rick Rule. In the end, as we all know, this issue will be one for the courts to decide. The federal court system can be very discriminating about what cases they use to decide important issues -- so even if panelists agree that Google is a monopoly, they have to find that its predatory practices harmed SourceTool for the case to be successful (McCollum). Bibliography Carr, Nicholas. "Understanding Google." 27 Nov 2007. Rough Type. 1 June 2009 . Hof, Rob. "Antitrust Suit Filed Against Google." 17 Feb 2009. BusinessWeek. 2 June 2009 . McCollum, Jordan. "Antitrust Suit Filed Against Google." 19 Feb 2009 . Marketing Pilgrim . 2 June 2009 . Page, Larry. "Corporate Information." n.d. Google. 1 June 2009 . Rubin, Janice. "General Overview of United States Antitrust Law." CRS Report for Congress. 2001. "Timeline results for history of Antitrust Lawsuit." n.d. Google. 2 June 2009 ......