Legal News

Antitrust Roundup: Google, Yahoo Try to Talk Their Way Out of Challenge

By Dan Slater

When it comes to eggs, tomatoes and organic food, antitrust challenges and investigations are still alive and well. Elsewhere, industry leaders seem to be having better luck keeping the trust-busters at bay.

No antitrust candy for Sandy? Sandy Litvack (pictured, right), a former Walt Disney vice chairman and recently-resigned Hogan & Hartson partner, joined a rarefied club last month when the DOJ hired him to handle a possible antitrust challenge to Google’s online advertising juggernaut. In June, Google struck a revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo that gives Google the right to sell search and text ads on Yahoo sites.

But now it looks like Google and Yahoo might strike a settlement with the government. The WSJ reports that the companies are in talks to head off an antitrust challenge to their proposed ad agreement. Concessions could include capping the volume of Google ads Yahoo would use, assurances that Yahoo would continue to compete in search ads, and a reporting mechanism to ensure compliance. Google and Yahoo declined to comment. A DOJ spokeswoman declined comment, adding, “our investigation is ongoing.”

Chip makers off the hook: The DOJ’s nearly two year probe into whether Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices fixed prices in the market for chips that manage graphics in personal computers has come to an end. Here’s the WSJ report.

And so has private antitrust litigation against the companies. Nvidia and ATI Technologies — which was purchased by AMD in 2006 — were regarded as fierce rivals until a contrary view was laid out in a private antitrust suit against the companies. On behalf of chip purchasers, law firm Boies Schiller filed suit in federal court alleging that execs conspired to begin announcing new products at about the same time and about the same price. The companies had previously announced products at different times and different prices, the complaint states. ATI and Nvidia denied the allegations, but each agreed to pay $850,000 as part of a settlement of the suit that was announced in September.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).