Antitrust Chief: Google is a Monopolist Threat

Apparently President Obama’s Antitrust Chief sees internet giant Google as an monopolistic threat. Picking our jaws up off of the floor for just a moment, let’s take a look at what Christine A. Varney had to say.

According to Gizmodo, Varney said Microsoft was “so last century” and “not the problem,” when it comes to anti-trust issues. Last June, Varney spoke during a panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute about Google and its business practices. While she praised the “terrific work” done by the Mountain View company and the lawful way it built up its monopoly she wasn’t all rainbows on the topic.

 "[The U.S. economy will] continually see a problem — potentially with Google [because it already] has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising," Gizmodo quotes Varney as saying. “[Google is] quickly gathering market power in what I would call an online computing environment in the clouds. When all our enterprises move to computing in the clouds and there is a single firm that is offering a comprehensive solution, you are going to see the same repeat of Microsoft," she added.

Google narrowly escaped antitrust proceedings in what was supposed to be an advertising deal with search competitor, Yahoo!. The two companies apparently spent significant time drawing up the deal; and when initial concerns were raised by the U.S. Department of Justice, Google delayed the deal by three months to give the government time to conduct its inquiry.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said last September that the deal was designed in such a way to meet government standards, however the company announced that continuing the effort was not in the best interests of Google or its users in November. News later emerged that the two companies decided to ditch the deal soon after after Department of Justice officials informed them of its plans to file an antitrust complaint. A complete turn around on the “we’ll go ahead no matter what the Department of Justice says,” attitude upheld during the months of investigation.