Integrating technologies and sharing information for a common purpose is by no means a new thing in the business world. However, Google and Apple appear to have taken things a little too far with both companies now the subject of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation.
The FTC anti-trust suit relates to directors Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson sitting on the board of both Google and Apple, contravening the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1941. This essentially means that the two are accused of having a common link which may be detrimental to competition, most notably Microsoft. If the two main competitors to Microsoft’s computing dominance are found to be in cahoots, they could very well find themselves in some pretty deep water; but this is certainly one news story that will rumble on for some time to come.
Search specialists Google haven’t been without controversy in recent months, particularly in the UK with their Street View application drawing criticism for invasion of privacy. Whilst this anti-trust case clearly a little more serious (for the company at least), their continued superiority over Internet search engine usage and marketing is unlikely to be greatly affected, whatever the outcome.
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