Comments on: Is The Antitrust Trap Getting Ready to Close Around Google?

By: boughtit

boughtit — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:51:30 +0000

I’d have to agree that the analysis is sparse, but the issue is ripe. The comparison to Mr. Gates is especially prescient. There are many issues that face a de facto monopoly and we are watching how failure to regulate the financial industry has brought entities “too big to fail” to seek bankruptcy protection.

In the Google world, it is the engrossing of markets that concerns me. We’ll have plenty of time to wait before the Google-run net devices around our homes and businesses put us at the mercy of a single-source provider. Nonetheless, that is where we are headed….

Google’s management needs to consider the core operations as key and spin-off these subsidiaries before the DOJ and/or a shareholder’s derivative action butchers the baby.

By: Paul Sweeting

Paul Sweeting — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:37:40 +0000

Tough crowd. For what it’s worth, the piece was intended to be somewhat speculative; that’s why there’s a question mark in the headline. In any case, I think when you have antitrust investigators from both the FTC and DOJ sniffing around in the U.S., coupled with heightened global political awareness of Google’s power and ambitions, particularly in the EU, where they have been much quicker to pull the antitrust trigger than in the U.S., that amounts to a non-trivial risk of trouble for the company. As for Brin’s op-ed, like Bill Gates before him, he’s doing his company no favors by trying to brush off DOJ’s concerns.

By: pgallant

pgallant — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:44:09 +0000

This article is awfully weak. It boils down to —

Criticism of GoogleBooks settlement + Glib op-ed by Sergey Brin =

Greater risk of DOJ antitrust lawsuit again Google

This “analysis” is not worthy of GigaOm, much less GigiOm Pro.