Splat | WiseTome.com

It has been not long back that Google made a move to acquire DoubleClick. This sent waves of different emotions through out the blogosphere and internet in general. Google has been grown to such an extent under such a short time, that it is faced with quite a varied palette of reactions for every action it takes.

And it was not long before Microsoft hedged to have the officials look into the Google DoubleClick acquisition under the scrutiny of Antitrust Laws.

Antitrust Laws in United States

Antitrust Laws in United States prohibits monopoly (or anti-competitive behavior) and condemns unfair business practices. The antitrust laws seek to protect the consumers. If a particular company is able to set itself in a monopoly position, it can change the prices and the supply at its own whim, since it is not driven to deliver quality service/products in order to compete with its competitors.

History Of Antitrust Cases

United States has seen its share of Antitrust cases filed against several companies in this decade.

In the beginning of the century, in 1904, US Government with Roosevelt as the president, stopped the formation of Northern Securities Co. If the company was allowed to form, it would have monopolized the transportation market in northwestern United States.

Standard Oil Co, in 1911 almost had around 88% monopoly in the oil business, with the control ranging from the crude oil pumps to distribution systems. It too faced antitrust case by the US Government and was broken up.

In 1917, antitrust case was filed against United States Steel Co. It survived the case, and avoided the breakup.

The most well known breakup in the later part of the century was of the telecom giant, AT&T. In 1974, as a result of the antitrust case filed, it was broken into several companies. (These companies earned the name - Baby Bells due to the origin of AT&T being Bell).

As the century came to the closing, a huge amount of business was done in the IT and computer industry. Microsoft was the shark in the sea, and it faced an antitrust case in 1999, over pushing IE with its operating system, and attempting to crush its competition - Netscape. It avoided a break up.

Google And Antitrust

The hinge on which the antitrust law (or the Sherman Act) is argued, is whether the actions by the company is ethical, and what are the effects of these actions on the consumers and general society.

Google has been going about, with the motto, Don’t Be Evil. The fronts it would face the case would obviously include privacy issues - Google accumulating immense amount of user data.

The argument here would be difficult to make for both sides. On one hand, with more user data going to Google - it will be able to provide better services to the user - for free. But on the other hand, the depth of data it collects on the user, only increases the liability of a major leak and violation of privacy rights of the users.

What do you think? Will Google face antitrust charges? Can you imagine the internet with ‘baby googles’ as a result of the US Government breaking it up?