San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/24/MNPS1K1SDQ.DTL
Online search giant Google confirmed today that federal regulators have begun a formal antitrust review of its business practices.
Building a successful antitrust case against Google would require proving both that the company is a monopoly and that it has abused its position to undermine competitors and harm customers, said Aaron Edlin, a professor of economics and law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
Both are high bars, antitrust lawyers said.
A rule of thumb for monopoly status under antitrust law is control of 70 percent of the relevant market, Edlin said. Google owns about 65.5 percent of the U.S. search market, according to comScore Inc. But it is expected to control 75.9 percent of U.S. search advertising revenue this year, according to research firm eMarketer.