Social Cultural Legal and Political Influences

Read the Case Study "The Nonmarket Environment of Google" and complete the following:

• Identify 4-6 specific examples of each of the "Four I's" in the case (issues, interests, institutions, and information).

• Identify where three of the issues are in the nonmarket life cycle.

SOCIAL, CULTURAL, LEGAL, POLITICAL INFLUENCE - BUS 7900
The Nonmarket Environment of Google
Google had become extraordinarily popular because of the efficiency of its search engine, and that popularity grew through its applications. The key to its financial success was the placement of advertisements tailored to the search queries of a user. Its strategy had three components: search, ads, and apps. Google's objective was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible." Its motto was "Don't be evil."
Accompanying Google's success and growth was an expanding set of nonmarket challenges. Some of these challenges came from competitors, some from producers of complementary products, some from content producers, and some from NGOs and the public.
PRIVACY
It was inevitable that Google would become public enemy number one to privacy activists. Google appointed Peter Fleischer as global privacy counsel with responsibility for encouraging Googlers to build privacy into new products early in the development process. He also worked for more uniformity in
privacy laws across countries so that the company would not have to deal with differing laws and regulations.
More important, however, was the evolving concept of privacy. Fleischer observed, "The ability to retain and find information, once it's public, means that the whole concept of privacy is changing and might be irreversible."67 In September 2007 Fleischer spoke to a United Nations audience and said, "The ultimate goal should be to create minimum standards of privacy protection that meet the expectations and demands of consumers, businesses and governments." Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) commented, "Google, under investigation for violating global privacy standards, is calling for international privacy standards. It's somewhat like someone being caught for speeding saying there should be a public policy to regulate speeding."
Some privacy issues were as amusing as serious. Mary Kalin-Casey of Oakland, California tried Google's Street View and went to the apartment building she lived in and managed. She zoomed in and saw her cat Monty sitting in the window of her apartment. She quickly wrote on a blog, "The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people's lives. The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged." The news media picked up on the story and raised the privacy issue. Google responded that "Street View only features imagery taken on public property. This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street."
Google Earth was blocked by the government of Bahrain because it allowed people to see the private homes and royal palaces of the ruling Khalifa family. Mahmood al-Yousif, who had encouraged citizens to post photos of the properties, said, "Some of the palaces take up more space than three or four
villages nearby and block access to the sea for fishermen. People knew this already. But they never saw it. All they saw were the surrounding walls." The Khalifa family was Sunni, and the majority Shias lived in the villages to which al-Yousif referred.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued draft rules on Internet privacy principles and sought comments. Pam Dixon, who headed the World Privacy Forum, campaigned for a binding "do not track" list similar to the "do not call" list that blocks telemarketers. The Network Advertising Initiative allowed consumers to opt out of data collection by the 20,000 Web sites that participated in the Initiative. The FTC draft sought to cover a much broader set of Web sites and preferred that the advertising industry exercise self-regulation rather than require government regulation. Jules Polenetsky, the chief privacy officer for AOL, said, "The industry needs to get together and formally push out the appropriate set of rules." He said that the FTC action "will provide the much-needed push to help crystallize emerging best practices across the industry."72 Shortly before the FTC action, Ask.com became the first search engine to allow users to opt out of collection of their queries. Congress announced plans for hearings on Internet privacy for early 2008.
ACQUISITION OF DOUBLECLICK
In 2007 Google made a $3.4 billion merger offer for DoubleClick. In 2000 DoubleClick had been involved in an explosive privacy conflict when it had acquired a company that collected data on catalog purchases and planned to combine that data with browsing data. Privacy advocates and government officials complained, and bowing to both private and public political pressure, DoubleClick pledged not to combine any databases that contained personally identifiable information.
The merger required approval by the FTC and also the attorneys general of the states. In addition, approval was required by other countries in which the two companies operated, most importantly the European Union.73 Microsoft objected to the acquisition, stating that it would "substantially reduce competition in the advertising market on the Web." Microsoft general counsel Bradford Smith stated, "By putting together a single company that will control virtually the entire market ... Google will control the economic fuel of the Internet."74 CEO Eric Schmidt replied, "We've studied this closely, and their claims, as stated, are not true." AT&T complained, "We think antitrust authorities should take a hard look at this deal and the implications. If any one company gets a hammerlock on the online advertising space, as Google seems to be trying to do, that is worrisome." Both Microsoft and AT&T had been defendants in major antitrust cases. Scott Cleland, president of the consulting firm Precursor, established a Web site, googleopoly.net.
A subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee on antitrust held hearings on the proposed acquisition in September, and David Drummond, chief legal officer for Google, said the two companies were "complementary businesses." The sub-committee chair and the ranking Republican member, however, wrote to the FTC stating that the proposed merger "raises very important competition issues in a vital sector of the economy" and "raises fundamental privacy concerns worthy of serious scrutiny." Microsoft testified in opposition to the acquisition.
DoubleClick's history tied the privacy issue to the com-petition issue. The New York State Consumer Protection Board urged federal regulators to reject the merger unless the companies were prevented from tracking and storing information on Web surfing by consumers. Executive Director Mindy Bockstein warned that if data were misused it "could seriously harm the privacy rights of consumers."76 EPIC, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group filed a formal request with the FTC to investigate the planned merger and its potential for privacy infringement. They complained that the merger "would impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America." EPIC complained that combining Google's tracking search inquiries and DoubleClick's cookies that track browsing would be a privacy concern. DoubleClick explained that the cookies were owned by its clients and that would not change with an acquisition. Nicole Wong of Google said, "EPIC utterly fails to identify any practice that does not comply with accepted privacy standards. Nothing about the proposed acquisition of DoubleClick changes our commitment to these privacy principles."
Privacy was generally not an antitrust issue, however, although it was under the purview of the FTC. In December the FTC voted 4-1 to approve the acquisition. Drummond wrote, "It is telling that while our competitors tried hard to come up with theories of how our customers and partners could be harmed by the deal, those customers and partners did not agree with those theories."
Prior to filing for approval in the European Union (EU), Google declared that the merger "poses no risk to competition and should be approved." Upon filing, the European Commission conducted an initial investigation and concluded that the two companies were "the leading providers" of online advertising space and services. The Commission then began an in-depth investigation and subsequently approved the acquisition.
EUROPEAN UNION PRIVACY REGULATIONS
Privacy concerns in the European Union led the data-protection officers of the member states to examine Google's data storage practices. EU law required data holders to store an individual's data only as long as necessary.78 For example, companies were allowed to store data for a limited period in case a customer returned a purchase and wanted a refund. Google also argued that retaining data was important to efforts to fight hackers. Privacy advocates, however, remained concerned. London based Privacy International reported that of the 2,000 complaints it received in 2006, 96 percent were about Google and its data retention policies. An EU Data Retention Directive was to take effect on September 1 and would limit retention to 24 months for ISPs and telephone companies, but it was not clear whether the directive pertained to search engines.
An advisory panel for the data protection officers wrote to Google asking it to justify its retention policy, and Google entered into discussion with them.79 Google pointed out that after data had been stored for a time, it made the queries anonymous. The officers as well as Internet users remained concerned, and the planned acquisition of DoubleClick added to the concern. BEUC, the largest consumer group in Europe, objected to the acquisition by writing to the European Commission advisory panel arguing that a merger threatened the privacy of EU residents. It wrote, "Never before has one single company had the market and technological power to collect and exploit so much information about what a user does on the Internet. The unprecedented and unmatched databases of user profiles . . . appear also to be clear violations of users' privacy rights."
After additional criticism regarding its retention of search query data, Google announced in June that it would retain the data only for 18 months. Nicole Wong explained, "We have decided to make this change with feedback from privacy advocates, regulators worldwide and, of course, our users." Google's Peter Fleischer stated, "Retention of logs data is critical to our ability to operate and improve our services and to provide adequate security for our users. We believe we can still address our legitimate interests in security, innovation, and antifraud efforts with this shorter period." London-based Privacy International had given Google the lowest privacy rating of any major company, and Fleischer replied, "We were disappointed with the report because it is full of numerous inaccuracies."
In May 2008 Peter Hustinx, the EU's chief data protection officer, warned Google that if it introduced Street View in the EU it would have to comply with the data protection directive.
SPECTRUM AUCTION
Television broadcasters were required to convert their broadcasts to digital signals in 2009. Since digital broadcasting used less of the electromagnetic spectrum than analog broadcasting, the FCC planned to auction a block in the 700 megahertz (MHz) band of the spectrum. This band could be used to offer nationwide wireless broadband service.
Mobile operators had restricted both the hardware devices and software that consumers could use on their networks. Google viewed a wireless service as a computer service rather than a telephone service, as current mobile services viewed it. Also, Google was developing a wireless telephone and wanted the phone to be usable on the network of whichever firm won the spectrum block. Google also wanted any nationwide wireless broadband network to be open to all software applications and any compatible devices, which would be a major departure from current FCC policy.
Google launched a nonmarket campaign to influence the FCC's design of the auction. Its strategy was unconventional. It made an offer to the FCC to bid at least $4.6 billion for the C block but only if the spectrum license met four conditions. One condition was that the spectrum be open to any device. A second condition was that it be open to any software application. A third condition was that the operator of any network be required to lease portions of the spectrum at wholesale rates. The fourth was that new networks would have to be mutually compatible. Each of these conditions would reduce the value of the spectrum to the winning bidder, which explained Google's pledge of a minimum bid.
Google's offer was supported by public interest groups as well as high-tech firms, including Yahoo, Intel, eBay's Skype, and Frontline Wireless, an investment fund headed by former FCC commissioner Reed Hundt and backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The Wall Street Journal, however, in an editorial was critical of Google and its audacity: "[Google] wants to make sure it can continue to free-ride on your broadband subscription bills, even in the mobile world. It wants to make sure it won't have to share the proceeds of its massive search and advertising dominance with suppliers of network capacity." A Fortune article was titled "Don't Be Arrogant. How Google is starting to act like your garden-variety monopoly."
The FCC was responsive to Google's position, and its draft rule included Google's first two conditions but not the requirement to lease portions of the spectrum at wholesale rates. The FCC's final rules included a minimum auction price of $4.6 billion, and if that price were not met, the open access provisions would be dropped and another auction conducted.
When the FCC announced its draft auction rules, Google praised the rules but said that they did not go far enough. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association called it "Silicon Valley welfare." AT&T said, "This is an attempt to pressure the U.S. government to turn the auction process on its head by ensuring only a few, if any, bidders will compete with Google. If Google is serious about introducing a competing business model into the wireless industry, Chairman Martin's compromise proposal allows them to bid in the auction, win the spectrum, and then implement every one of the conditions they seek."88 Verizon was equally critical. "Google's filing urges the FCC to adopt rules that force all bidders to implement Google's business plan—which would reduce the incentives for other players to bid," said executive vice president Thomas J. Tauke.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Google had an aggressive view of the intellectual property rights of others. Its vision of "organizing the world's information" required access to the content produced by others. Google did not use material from a media source that requested that it not do so, but in the absence of such a request it used the material. Lee Bromberg, a partner at Bromberg & Sustein, explained, "What characterizes Google is its very aggressive approach to copyright law. My own view, as someone who often defends intellectual property, is that in every area where Google has pushed it has been over the line, but it has an interesting carrot-and-stick approach. The carrot is your content gets to be displayed to Google's vast army of users, which increases rather than diminishes its commercial value to you. The stick is that it says it is just going to access your content as part of the plan to control and organize our knowledge, and that it is up to you to opt out. Well, you can't burden the copyright holder with an obligation to demand their content is not used."
GOOGLE BOOKS
Google announced that it would digitize the book collections of the University of California, Harvard University, Oxford University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and the New York Public Library. Google planned to provide short excerpts in response to queries about a book, and this required the company to scan and store the entire book. Google argued that since it would only provide snippets of a book in response to queries it represented fair use under the copyright laws.
Google's Book Search Library Project drew immediate fire from publishers and from the company's competitors. The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google. The president of the World Association of Newspapers, Gavin O'Reilly, said, "If you subscribe to the Ten Commandments, Google operated with only nine, leaving out 'thou shall not steal.' "91 Google had a different view from traditional media. Eric Schmidt had said that Google had a "genuine disagreement" and that the media had to show that its content had value. "That's often a difficult conversation."
Google News
In 2007 Google began to supplement its News service by inviting, on an experimental basis, individuals and organizations that had been mentioned or quoted in an article to offer comments attached as a link on the story page. Journalists and editors were also allowed to attach comments. Google individually checked and verified the identity of those providing the comments but did no editing. The company was generally praised for allowing rebuttals and comments. The executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, Jim Brady, said, "It's a typical Google idea: It's an interesting concept, and I'm not sure how they're going to do it technically, but because it's Google, it's worth watching." Some news pages allowed anyone to post comments on articles or to link to blogs.
Google News found opposition in Europe. A Belgian court found Google guilty of copying copyrighted content without permission and fined the company for each day it had violated the copyright. Google said, "We believe that Google News is entirely legal. We only ever show the headlines and a few snippets of text and small thumbnail images. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper's Web site." The lawsuit was filed by Copiepresse, which represented 18 European publications. Copiepresse said, "Today we celebrate a victory for content producers. We showed that Google cannot make profit for free from the credibility of our newspaper brands, hard work of our journalists and skill of our photographers."94 The decision by the Belgian court was significant because the copyright laws in European countries were quite similar, and Agence France-Presse had filed lawsuits in France and the United States against Google. Google defied the Belgian court, which had ordered it to publish the court's ruling in the case. Google announced that it would appeal both the decision and the order.
Google also took the copyright issue to the content providers. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which included Google and Microsoft as members, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the warnings used by content providers were misrepresenting the law. The warning for Major League Baseball was ". . . the accounts and description of this game may not be disseminated, without express written consent." The Association stated that the warnings "materially misrepresent U.S. copyright law, particularly the fundamental built-in First Amendment accommodations which serve to safeguard the public interest" and had a "chilling effect" on users who were deterred from legitimate uses.
U.S. GOVERNMENT ENFORCEMENT
Google was also on the other side of intellectual property protection issues. The U.S. government sought to enforce the Child Online Protection Act, which was intended to stop child pornography by imposing criminal penalties on individuals with Web sites containing material harmful to minors. The government asked for data on search queries that it could use to develop filtering technology to identify predators and purveyors of child pornography. America Online, Microsoft's MSN, and Yahoo complied with the request, but Google refused and continued to do so after the government issued a subpoena for the data. It told the Department of Justice, "Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception Google can accept. And one can envision scenarios where queries alone could reveal identifying information about a specific Google user, which is another outcome that Google cannot accept."
The government had asked Google for a random sample of 1 million Web addresses and a week's search requests, with any information that could identify the user removed. The Department of Justice then took Google to court to force it to provide the information. In the court hearing the government substantially scaled back its request, and the judge ordered Google to provide 50,000 random Web addresses. The judge also ruled that providing the requested 50,000 random search queries could harm Google through a loss of goodwill among its users.
TRADEMARKS
American Airlines filed a lawsuit against Google for selling search terms like "American Airlines" to other firms for advertising. Google responded, "We are confident that our trademark policy strikes a proper balance between trademark owners' interests and consumer choice." Other companies also complained about competitors' ads appearing when users searched on their name. In 2006 Google was successfully sued in France by Louis Vuitton and agreed to remove all ads for a Louis Vuitton search. In the United States Geico had filed a similar lawsuit, but the companies settled the lawsuit before the court had reached a final verdict. In a case filed by Perfect 10 about posting thumbnail images, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, "We conclude that the significantly transformative nature of Google's search engine, particularly in light of its public benefit, outweighs Google's superseding and commercial use of the thumbnails in this case."
GOOGLE HEALTH
Google assigned a team to develop Google Health, which pro-claimed on a prototype Web page, "At Google, we feel patients should be in charge of their health information, and they should be able to grant their health care providers, family members, or whomever they choose, access to this information. Google Health was developed to meet this need."100 Earlier in the year Microsoft had acquired Medstory, which provided software to manage health care information.
GOOGLE TELEPHONE
Eric Schmidt commented on the opportunities for ads on wireless telephones: "What's interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the non-mobile phone ads because they are more personal." He also said, "We are partnering with almost all of the carriers and manufacturers to get Google search and other Google applications onto their devices."101 Google also announced an open source mobile phone platform called Android that could be used to develop new wireless services.
YOUTUBE
Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube was subject to intellectual property complaints because users posted pirated videos and broadcasts. Google was protected by the 1998 Millennium Copyright Act that provided a "safe harbor" to Internet sites that promptly removed copyrighted material in response to a complaint from the holder. The act, however, did not require the site operator to actively search to determine if material posted violated a copyright. Google investigated the complaints it received. Critics, however, were not satisfied.
YouTube was also subject to censorship. When a posting contained a trailer for an as-yet unreleased film by a Dutch law-maker that was critical of Islam, Pakistan shut down YouTube by directing all traffic to a "black hole" where all content was discarded. A routing error, however, resulted in most of the world's access to YouTube to disappear for several hours.
TOLLS
Google and other Internet sites feared that ISPs would begin to impose a "congestion charge" on users that occupied large amounts of capacity when using broadband services. The possibility of such charges posed a risk for YouTube, where users uploaded and downloaded videos. Paul Gallant with Stanford Group Company observed, "Google sees network owners as potentially coming between it and its customers, so they realize how critical Washington was to their long-term game plan. Google is still nowhere near the Bells and cable [television] when it comes to lobbying, but it does have a real cachet that can make up some of the gap."
Google advocated "net neutrality" and sought laws to require ISPs to treat all Internet traffic alike. This meant that users would not be differentiated by how much Internet capacity they used.
DISCRIMINATION
In 2004 Google fired its director of engineering, Brian Reed, because he was "slow." Reed filed a California age discrimination lawsuit against Google, but the trial judge dismissed the lawsuit. Reed appealed the dismissal, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that sufficient evidence had been presented to justify the case going to trial. Google appealed the ruling, and in 2008 the California Supreme Court agreed to consider Google's appeal.
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Environmental Practices
Google decided to influence attitudes and policy toward the environment. "We want to leverage our assets and influence the world beyond the computer. We are going to argue in public to change attitudes on a number of things. The first one is energy standards," said Urs Holzle of Google.
With a motto of "Do no evil" Google was concerned about the environmental impact of the energy used by its hundreds of thousands of computers. The company pledged to become carbon neutral and announced a project backed by hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce the cost of renewable energy by 25-50 percent. Its objective was to produce a gigawatt of electricity at a cost below the cost of producing electricity from coal. Larry Page predicted that the goal could be reached within a matter of "years, not decades."
Philanthropy
When it went public, Google pledged to contribute 1 percent of its assets, 1 percent of its profits, and employee time to philanthropy. In 2008 Google fulfilled its pledge by establishing Google.org, or DotOrg in Google-speak, that was unusual in its structure. It was established as for-profit so that it could invest in start-ups and form partnerships. For-profit status, however, meant that taxes had to be paid on contributions from Google to the organization and on any earnings. The organization selected five initiatives: helping communities identify and deal with potential pandemics before they could spread, supporting public services information in developing countries, aiding medium-sized businesses in developing countries, developing renewable energy at a cost less than coal, and speeding the commercialization of a car capable of getting 100 miles per gallon. DotOrg invested $10 million in closely held eSolar, Inc.
Indigenous Peoples
Google joined with the Surui tribe of Brazil's Amazon jungle in a project to provide satellite images of its reservation so that the tribe could identify illegal logging and mining. Megan Quinn of Google explained, "If you look at the Surui land today in Google Earth, you'll see their island of healthy green rainforest is surrounded almost completely by clear-cut, barren land. The stark contrast at their boundary is dramatic, and conveys vividly what is at stake."
CHINA
Human Rights
Using servers located in the United States, Google began offering a Chinese-language version of Google.com in 2000, but the site was frequently unavailable or slow because of censoring by the Chinese government. Google had a significant share of searches in China, but it lagged behind the market leader Baidu.com. Google concluded that it was imperative to host a Web site from within China, but Google had to decide how to deal with the censorship imposed by the Chinese government.
As a result of an extensive debate within the company, cofounder Serge Brin explained, "We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people."106 Google decided to offer a site, Google.cn, but without features that allowed users to provide content. Google offered neither e-mail nor the ability to create blogs, since user-generated material could be seized by the Chinese government. This avoided Google putting individuals in jeopardy of being arrested. Because it would be required by Chinese law to censor search results associated with sensitive issues, Google decided to place a brief notice at the bottom of a search page when material had been censored, as it did in other countries such as France and Germany, which ban the sale of Nazi items. Google planned to exercise self-censorship and developed a list of sensitive items by consulting with third parties and by studying the results of the Chinese government's Internet filtering. Senior policy counsel Andrew McLaughlin stated, "In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy. While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission." Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) asked during a congressional hearing, "Can you say in English that you are ashamed of what you and your company . . . have done?"
New York City's comptroller, who managed the city's pension plans that held $338 million of Google shares, announced that he would submit a shareholder proposal with the SEC for voting at the company's annual shareholder meeting. The proposal stated, "Technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights."108 The New York State Pension Funds also qualified a shareholder resolution demanding that the company not host Web sites in countries that restricted Internet usage.
In its competition with Baidu.com Google invested in Tianya.cn, a Chinese Web site that allowed users to connect with each other and answer one another's questions. The Web site would use Google technology. This Web site seemed to raise new risks that Google had sought to avoid.
The next phases of Google's operations in China are considered in the Chapter 16 case Google in China and the Chapter 24 case Google Out of China.
Online Video
China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and the Ministry of Information Industry clarified its rules for video-streaming, allowing companies such as Youku and Tudou to "re-register and continue operations" if they were currently in compliance with the law. Although the regulations issued in early 2008 were not entirely clear, they appeared to require new companies to be owned or controlled by the government. This appeared to block Google's YouTube. The government reiterated its prohibition against pornography and material that "promoted violence or other serious illegal business."
MICROSOFT AND VISTA
When Microsoft rolled out its new Vista operating system, Google recognized that it disadvantaged Google's search engine by only using Microsoft's search engine for queries entered by right clicks and pane windows.110 Microsoft argued that it was easy to set the selection for the search engine. To get leverage over Microsoft, Google sought to intervene in the court responsible for the enforcement of the federal antitrust consent decree with Microsoft, which was to expire in November 2007. The Department of Justice and Microsoft had reached a compromise regarding aspects of Vista. In an amicus brief Google told the court that it could provide information useful to the court and said that it was concerned that despite the compromise Microsoft would not eliminate its anticompetitive conduct. Google asked that the consent decree be extended. Google also lobbied in state capitals, arguing that
its applications were unfairly discouraged in Vista. In 2007 Microsoft relented and made several changes that made it easier to conduct searches with non-Microsoft search engines.
MICROSOFT AND YAHOO
In 2008 Microsoft made a $44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo. CEO Steve Ballmer argued that a merger would create a viable number two competitor to Google's advertising placement business. Google senior vice president David Drummond raised antitrust concerns in writing on the company's blog, "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies—and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets." Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly called Jerry Yang of Yahoo to offer support in opposing the offer. Commentators speculated, however, that moves such as Yahoo outsourcing its advertising placement to Google could run into antitrust problems of their own by reducing com-petition. The antitrust subcommittees in both the House and Senate indicated they would hold hearings if Yahoo agreed to the merger, providing Google an opportunity to take its case to Congress, as Microsoft had done in Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.
References
Baron, D.(2013).Business and Its Environments.(7th ed).Prentice Hall