Trade, Commission, Breaking-Up, Google, and, Apple Tie-in

p>GOOGLE, APPLE SCRUTINIZED BY THE FTC
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jessica Vascellaro]
The Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether the overlap of directors on the boards of Apple and Google violates antitrust laws. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson, the former chief executive of Genentech Inc., sit on the boards of both companies. Antitrust regulations allow the government to intervene if directors sit on the boards of two competing companies and their presence could reduce competition. The issue is rarely pursued, lawyers say, in part because it is difficult to prove the impact of the overlapping directors. It is also relatively easy to address by resignations from boards. Why the FTC is taking up the issue now remains unclear. But one possibility is that Google and Apple, which long dominated separate sectors, are competing in more areas. Google and Apple, for example, have both developed software for mobile phones. They also offer competing Web browsers, and are both major players in Internet video, through Google’s YouTube site and Apple’s iTunes online store.