Google (GOOG) Draws More Scrutiny From the FTC

According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, the FTC is looking into ties between Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) due to overlapping directors on the boards of both companies.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former-Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson are on the board of both companies.

Antitrust rules allow the government to intervene if directors sit on the boards of two competing companies and their presence could reduce competition, according to the report. The issue is rarely pursued, because it is difficult to prove and it is also easy to address by the resignation from one of the boards.

Maybe more concerning for Google shareholders it the fact that this is the third inquiry by regulators related to Google in the past year. Samuel Miller, an antitrust lawyer who is a partner at Sidley Austin in San Francisco, was quoted as saying, "It appears that Google is now in the sights of the antitrust enforcers."

Link to WSJ Article

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