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stories about: "justice department"
Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Dec 3rd 2008 6:52pm


Filed Under:
antitrust, justice department

Companies:
google, justice department, yahoo



DOJ Was Three Hours From Suing Google For Antitrust Violations

from the pick-your-fights dept

It was pretty clear back in September, when the Justice Department hired well-known antitrust litigator Sandy Litvack, that it had decided that it was going to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, even if there were serious questions about what harm its ad deal with Yahoo would actually cause. Despite plenty of negotiation and totally rewriting the deal, the Justice Department was set on opposing it, leading Google to give up.

Now, that litigator, Sandy Litvack has admitted that the Justice Department was three hours away from filing its antitrust suit, which he was "looking forward to" and he's apparently disappointed he didn't get to go to court over it. That seems troublesome. If the purpose of antitrust activity is to protect consumers, then its litigators should be pretty happy that it avoided a (taxpayer-funded) legal battle.

13 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Deals

Deals

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Nov 3rd 2008 6:22pm


Filed Under:
antitrust

Companies:
google, justice department, yahoo



Yahoo And Google Revise Deal To Try To Win Antitrust Approval

from the bargaining dept

With Yahoo and Google in the midst of a vast negotiation with the Justice Department to try to avoid an antitrust lawsuit over their proposed ad deal -- even to the point of Google threatening to back out entirely -- it shouldn't come as a surprise that they're going to propose various modifications to the deal.

The news today is leaking that the two companies are proposing a greatly scaled back version of the deal to see if it passes Justice Department muster. In this case, the deal would be shortened from 10 years to just two, and would limit how much revenue it could represent to Yahoo while also allowing any advertiser to opt out of the deal. We're still waiting for a clear explanation of how this deal will actually negatively impact consumers, but some people still insist it will. For those who believe so, let's ask a simple question: how is this any worse than Yahoo disappearing from the marketplace? Because if the company doesn't do something soon that may be what we're looking at.

6 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Deals

Deals

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Oct 31st 2008 2:23am


Filed Under:
advertising, antitrust, deals

Companies:
google, justice department, yahoo



Google And Yahoo May End Deal; Not Worth An Antitrust Lawsuit

from the ouch-for-yahoo dept

With various politicians pushing the Justice Department to slam Google on antitrust charges (it's worth noting, of course, that Rep. Joe Barton, who seems to be leading the anti-Google charge, just so happens to have received an awful lot of campaign money from AT&T -- Google's arch nemesis), it appears that Google and Yahoo's attempt to broker a deal with the Justice Department may be falling through.

Reports are coming out that the two companies are ready to announce that they're walking away from their planned deal. This actually represents a bad end result for almost everyone involved. Yahoo will be hurt the most by this, and the last thing Yahoo needs right now is more trouble. For Google it's a loss, but not a huge loss. Microsoft comes out of it happy (and will gleefully watch Yahoo's stock continue to slide). It's still unclear what actual harm it would do to the marketplace to have Google running ads on Yahoo, but since when is politics about reason?

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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