Google’s gone and run afoul of the Department of Justice again. Its interest piqued by the growing outcry over the company’s proposed book-search settlement with authors and publishers, the agency has opened an inquiry.
In its last legal salvo against Psystar, Apple suggested the Mac clone maker was backed by a silent third party or two. And at this point it better be, because there’s going to be hell to pay when Apple legal is through with it, regardless of how Psystar revises its original complaint.
“Google abandoned [its deal with Yahoo] not because pressing ahead with it ‘risked’ a protracted legal battle, but because it guaranteed one.” I wrote that on Nov. 6, following the official dissolution of Google’s proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo. Turns out the guarantee to which I referred was an ironclad one. Sanford Litvack, the attorney who would have been lead counsel in the event of a government antitrust case against Google, tells American Lawyer Daily that the Department of Justice was literally hours away from suing the company when it bailed on the deal.
Psystar’s ideological crusade against Apple is fast turning into a boondoggle for the Mac clone maker. On Tuesday, a federal judge dismissed Psystar’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple and with it, one of the company’s last remaining chances to stay in business peddling PCs with Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled, an apparent violation of Apple’s software license agreement.
Congratulations Google, you’re the new Microsoft. And we have that on no lesser authority than the U.S. Department of Justice. Google is the new empire. The new Borg. Aggressive. Efficient. Assimilative. Feared. And lest there be any doubt of that, consider the DOJ’s comments Wednesday on the dissolution of Google’s proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo.
Apparently Google would rather abandon its proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo than have the government dictate its terms. This morning Google walked away from the deal saying it’s not in the company’s best interests to risk the protracted legal battle brewing over it. This, not a week after Google and Yahoo submitted a revised, diminished version of the pact that the companies had hoped would appease regulators. Seems Google wasn’t quite as committed to working with Yahoo as CEO Eric Schmidt suggested.
“We see little to stop Google from reaching 70 percent market share eventually; the question, really, comes down to, ‘How long could it take?’” RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan asked that question back in March 2006. Today he has his answer: Not long at all, really.
“Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions,” Google chief legal officer David Drummond wrote back in February.
Troubling indeed. Almost as troubling as the questions raised by Google’s partnership with Yahoo, as Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s Platforms and Services Division, pointed out during a panel discussion at the Cannes Debate today.
China’s state-run newspaper, the Shanghai Securities News, has got it all wrong. Beijing isn’t investigating whether Microsoft engaged in discriminatory pricing. Nor does it plan to file an antitrust lawsuit against it once the country’s anti-monopoly laws are enacted in August. At least that’s what China’s State Intellectual Property Office is claiming, anyway.
Steve Martin once said, “The difference between a good comedian and a great one is ti … ming, tiiiii-ming, timmm-ing . . . timing!” If that’s the case, Microsoft’s comedic timing is impeccable. In a status report filed with Federal antitrust regulators yesterday, Microsoft said it had done much to comply with its 2002 antitrust consent decree and generally applauded its efforts toward interoperability and fair competition.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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