Why US antitrust regulators should probe Google search
Baku, June 25 (AZERTAC). The word is that the US Department of Justice may sue Google over its proposed $700m acquisition of flight data outfit ITA Software. And we can only hope that the feds have far more than flight data on the brain. As it investigates whether Google could use its web search monopoly to erect a second monopoly in the flight search market, the DoJ must also ask whether the company could do much the same thing in who knows how many other markets.
In its recent paper analyzing Google`s ITA acquisition (pdf), the American Antitrust Institute explores the deal`s potential effect on flight search, but it also looks beyond this particular merger. "One has to wonder about antitrust scrutiny for any future Google acquisitions - including vertical acquisitions that might otherwise appear benign in traditional commercial settings," writes the AAI, a thirteen-year-old independent antitrust watchdog intent on protecting the American consumer.
"Questions about the prospect that Google might leverage a broader search monopoly into dominance of distinct vertical search markets through acquisitions seem destined to crop up again."
According to Robert Lande - a director of the American Antitrust Institute, a professor at the University of Baltimore law school, and former antitrust prosecutor with the Federal Trade Commission - the institute`s added concern is that as Google moves into new vertical markets, its search engine will only become more dominant, further separating itself from its last real competitor: Microsoft.
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