Apple, Google Fail to Escape Regulatory Scrutiny
- From: "Rotten Apple" <rotten@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 10:53:44 -0500
http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10002925/apple-google-fail-to-escape-regulatory-scrutiny/
Apple, Google Fail to Escape Regulatory Scrutiny
By Erik Sherman | Aug 4, 2009
I have a feeling that somewhere in Calfiornia, both Eric Schmidt and Steve
Jobs are wondering where they went wrong. Together and separately to varying
degrees, Google and Apple each has been flirting with the edges of business
practice and what regulators would stand. Since May, they'd been under the
magnifying glass, if not the microscope yet, of the Federal Trade Commission
over having shared two board directors, including Google's CEO. And now, no
matter what they do, that interest won't stop developing.
Just last week, the FTC decided to look into Apple's refusal to carry Google
Voice in the iPhone app store. (And an aside: Am I wrong, or is it begging
to be tagged for monopolistic practices when a company insists on being the
only outlet for third party software for its own devices and making it
impossible for anyone else to do business with those consumers in an
unencumbered way? Just wondering.)
I thought that the incident, combined with Schmidt's resignation from the
Apple board, was a way to signal to regulators that they didn't have to keep
probing. So much for success there. The FTC has indicated that it will
continue its inquiry into the Apple-Google board relationships. According to
the Reuters story, even though Schmidt resigned, former Genentech CEO Arthur
Levinson is still on the board of the two - Dare we say it? - competitors,
and that's enough to keep the agency from dropping the investigation.
It's going to take a complete break in the chain between the two for the FTC
to back off - at least on this issue. But there have been so many other
potential areas for inquiry, whether exploding iPods, or concerns over
online privacy, that even getting one particular monkey off the corporate
back is going to be far from solving an ongoing problem with authority.
.
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