Obama’s pick for antitrust chief linked Google to antitrust last year
Antitrust. It’s a word that every large company fears. Standard Oil, AT&T and Microsoft have all become associated with it in American history, and now the company that has become synonymous with the web, Google, has to be careful not to be added to that group.
While there have been whispers for some time of Google holding a monopoly over web search and web advertising, the issue came to the forefront last year when Google signed a pact with Yahoo to partner up on search advertising. In November, Google walked away from that deal just three hours before the Department of Justice was poised to file an antitrust complaint again the company, according to Wired. And under the new administration, it doesn’t appear that things will be any easier for Google, as President Obama’s pick to be the country’s new antitrust chief, Christine A. Varney, has directly linked the company with having a monopoly before, as Bloomberg points out today.
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Nothing would make me happier than to break Google’s monopolistic hold on PPC advertising…force them to be more transparent with their adwords guidelines! Eliminating the feared “Google-slap”.