Trustbusters divided on next move on Google

That’s the question facing lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice investigating Google. Sources who have provided testimony to the government say a departmental debate revolves around whether antitrust regulators should challenge Google’s proposed revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, or go for the whole enchilada–and haul Google into court on broader charges related to its dominance in search advertising.

While I feel that the government needs to disallow the merger of Yahoo! and Google over search word advertising. I don’t think you want to go too far and challenge Google’s dominance in search advertising by itself. As long as there is a fair and just open market for competition, you have to let Google be the dominant search advertising corporation. If Yahoo! or some other search company were more popular then they’d be the dominant ones pulling in search advertising revenue. And as long as fair competition is allowed that could be a hypothetical reality.

There’s a difference between success and a monopoly. Microsoft was a success with Windows but it still faces competition from Linux and Apple’s operating systems—even though Windows—like Google—is the dominant player in it’s field. Hypothetically one day Ubuntu or Leopard could be the leader. Microsoft was monopoly-like when they tried to force everyone to use Internet Explorer because it was tied in with their OS.

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