The Justice Department’s top antitrust official announced Monday a return to a more aggressive approach to dealing with dominant companies that use their position to squelch competition.
Christine Varney, head of the agency’s antitrust division, announced the withdrawal of a Bush administration policy report and said the department “will be aggressively pursuing” companies that abuse their monopoly positions.
In a speech to the Center for American Progress, Varney said antitrust officials at the Justice Department “will return to tried and true case law and Supreme Court precedent in enforcing antitrust law.”
Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits illegal attempts to monopolize or to maintain a monopoly.
The question becomes with this new policy announced who will the government target.
It appears to this causal observer, that first on the governments radar might be Google.
With user share of almost 75% and increasing, its own web browser no being actively promoted no one can doubt that Google could fit the definition of a company that government will choice to go after, as it has in the past against Microsoft.
I hope Ms. Varney doesn’t forget to add VeriSign to the list (with their control of .com and .net). When dot-com fees would be under $2/yr with a tender process for procurement of the registry contract, but actual prices are closer to $7/yr, that’s almost $500 million/yr of consumer abuse by VeriSign with roughly 100 million names under management.
“but actual prices are closer to $7/yr, ”
And rising!
“As you may remember in 2006, VeriSign was granted a new contract that allowed them to increase the registration fees in four of the next six years.”
http://www.thedomains.com/2008/03/27/verisign-to-raise-com-domain-fees-again/
George, I totally agree.
There is so much competition online that Google actually must be BEST to maintain their leader position. Every day is created few new startups for something to compete with Google.