Federal Trade Commission Investigating Apple-Google Relationship
by Dave Clarke
May 5, 2009
The New York Times is reporting that according to their sources, The Federal Trade Commission has begun to look into the close ties of the Board of Directors for both Apple and Google due to two people who each have seats on the Boards of each company. Those two people are Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, and Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech. Specifically, the FTC wants to know if the presence of those two executives on both Boards is creating anti-competitive behavior, thus raising the possibility of Antitrust violations.
While it's true that Apple and Google have a good relationship for companies that are rivals, it doesn't appear, at least on the surface, that any laws have been violated and as the NYT story goes on to say, usually in a case like this if the FTC goes public with their concerns, the Board member or members in question simply resign from one of the Boards and any further investigation is usually stopped.
