If you don’t think this is keeping the folks up late at night over at Google, you’re wrong. And if they are NOT up late at night, sell your shares. From the Journal piece:
The Justice Department has quietly hired one of the nation’s best-known litigators, former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Sanford Litvack, for a possible antitrust challenge to Google Inc.’s growing power in advertising.
Mr. Litvack’s hiring is the strongest signal yet that the U.S. is preparing to take court action against Google and its search-advertising deal with Yahoo Inc. The two companies combined would account for more than 80% of U.S. online-search ads.
Have you read John Heilemann’s excellent book on the impact of the Microsoft anti-trust deal on that company’s culture and business? It’s worth another look. Yeah, it’s called…Pride Before the Fall.
Well I hope that Google thinks this through very carefully. They are so integrated into the online world that a negative result would be harmful for more than just Google directly.
The gov’t needs to be careful here. After the DOJ neutered Microsoft, the stock has pretty much traded sideways for the better part of a decade and their products have underwhelmed — Zune, Windows Mojave, etc. Now, I don’t know how much of that is because Microsoft got too big or because the DOJ stole their mojo.
I don’t want Google to start sucking like Microsoft does.