The third procedure concerns the links between Google and Apple

Eric Schmidt may have the ear of Barack Obama, this does not preclude the firm which he heads, Google, suffer today several investigations of the new administration. The Department of Justice (DoJ) has in fact opened three procedures, since the beginning of the year, against the Internet giant. Each could lead to an antitrust trial.

The first concerns an agreement by Google with major publishers, which now allows to digitize and make available on the Web for millions of books. This agreement off a complaint filed by these editors, as early as 2005, to oppose a "wild" scan Google received the end of legal proceedings against a compensation of $ 125 million, but the US Government wants to determine if Google did not abuse its dominant position to succeed conditions, all in all, very beneficial for him.

Additionally, the DoJ also sent official requests for information to Google as well as other technology firms, such as Yahoo! or Apple to find out if there is a secret pact between these companies prohibiting the wild demobilization of their top executives. The existence of the agreement, occult, denounced to the DoJ by former Google employee, contrary to U.S. antitrust laws.

The third procedure concerns the links between Google and Apple. While Eric Schmidt serves on the Board of Directors of the firm of Steve Jobs, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Government agency that regulates the trade in the United States, wondered if secret agreements between the two neighbours of Silicon Valley would not exist to limit the competition they engage.

Even if Google is increasingly seen, including the American public, as the new "Big Brother of the 2000s", is not the only one to be in the crosshairs of the US Government.

Intel, after having been recently sentenced by the antitrust European a record fine for abuse of dominant position in its historic rival, Advanced Micro Devices, is now under threat of a similar survey, which could be this time initiated by the FTC.

The conjunction of all these governmental inquisitions is coincidence Non. They would be driven by lobbying, apparently paradoxical but intensive, influential economic players in Silicon Valley. They point out that, in the technologies of information, the presence of actors too dominant IBM day before yesterday, Microsoft yesterday, Google today hinders innovation. And so, finally, the creation of wealth. This is the thesis defended by Gary Reback, a commercial lawyer in the region, who visited famous originally being antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft. In a recent book, he pointed out that whenever the US Government did meet with existing anti-trust laws, this has helped countless innovative start-up to develop and prosper.

It is striking to see how the action antitrust American, for thirty years, is dependent on the political color of the tenant of the White House. In 1982, shortly after the election of Republican Ronald Reagan, instigator of the ultra-liberal and disrupt turn America, abandoned the lawsuits against IBM, after twelve years of proceedings that could lead to the dismantling of Big Blue.

By contrast, is chaired by Democrat Bill Clinton that are initiated against Microsoft antitrust trial, in 1998, which will lose eventually of their force four years more later... under Republican President George w. Bush.

After eight years of laxness on the part of the US administration, there would therefore today, with the election of a democratic President, a return to greater rigour to combat the abuse of dominant position.

With regard to Barack Obama itself, the contradiction is only apparent. Of course, he was elected with the active support of the Silicon Valley and Eric Schmidt himself sits on its Board for innovation, which meets regularly at the White House. But the new US President is also particularly sensitive to the arguments from innovative start-ups from Silicon Valley and investors for a technological landscape which is not dominated by one or two players, siphoning, direct or indirect way innovation.

In the light of this analysis, understand certain recent decisions. For example one led, last March, IBM or HP to renounce to capture Sun Microsystems, so that the two computer manufacturers were very tempted to do so. In fact, they feared that questioned the archidominante position that this would have given them on the server market. Idem for Google when, just after the election of Barack Obama, in November last year, the firm of Eric Schmidt abandons brutally to cause commune with Yahoo! to Microsoft. This new alliance would have made almost monopilistique the market of online advertising...