Google's future anti-trust problems
Steve Ruble has a very thought provoking post about the possibility of the DOJ wanting to break up Google at some point in the future. I agree completely, especially the point about this hinging on the outcome of the 2008 election. Certainly if a Democrat wins the presidency Google is in trouble. I'm sure everyone remembers how the DOJ went after Microsoft during the end of the Clinton years, and then seemed to lose interest after Bush came into office. A much less publicized parallel to this occurred in the early 1980's. I owned a software mail-order business at that time, and knew that the DOJ was investigating price fixing by software companies, which was pretty blatant. I remember George Tate yelling at the top of his lungs at Spring Comdex '82, "If those bastards don't raise their prices, I'll cut them off." A DOJ lawyer had been contacting me fairly regularly about this, but then in the fall of '82 he called and said the case was closed, because the White House had decided that "price fixing was good for the economy." This was during the 1982 recession. I guess Brin and Page had better start contributing to the RNC.
