According to WSJ, the U.S. Department of Justice has quietly hired one of the nation’s best-known litigators and former antitrust chief Sanford “Sandy” M. Litvack — “for a possible court challenge” to Google’s (GOOG) growing advertising power”.
Mr Litvack, former vice chairman of the Walt Disney Co. (DIS), and assistant attorney general in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Carter administration. He has been asked to examine the evidence gathered so far during the review of Google’s search-advertising pending deal with Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), and build a case if the decision is made to proceed, lawyers close to the review told the Journal.
Mr. Litvack’s hiring sends a strong signal to the parties involved that the U.S. Dept. Of Justice [DOJ] is perhaps, preparing to take court actions against them. If there is a suit, it’s unclear whether the DOJ would target the Google-Yahoo deal alone or expand to include other Google online-advertising activities.
Google pretends the Yahoo deal doesn’t violate antitrust laws and that the deal is pro-competitive. In a statement today, the search giant said:
We voluntarily delayed implementation of this arrangement to give the Department of Justice time to understand it, and we continue to work cooperatively with them. While there has been a lot of speculation about this agreement’s potential impact on advertisers or ad prices, we think it would be premature for regulators to halt the agreement before we implement it and everyone can judge the actual impact.
It will be interesting to see how this development will evolve from here. One thing is for sure ; it is relatively rare for the DOJ to hire a special counsel from outside the department.
[...] Since reaching their partnership agreement, both Yahoo and Google have consistently implied the two co.’s are not merging, and the deal is not exclusive for either party, so the partnership does not need upfront approval from the authorities. While their argument in legal terms has merit, if the deal is considered as “anti-competitive” – it could be stopped or modified to ensure fairness ; steps that the U.S. Justice Department seems to be currently contemplating. [...]
[...] reviewing Yahoo’s partnership with Google and is currently trying, through the help of Mr. Sanford Litvack, a veteran antitrust lawyer, to assess if there is any evidence that Google’s growing power [...]