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WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission is considering a broad antitrust investigation into Google Inc.’s dominance of the Internet-search industry, two people familiar with the matter said.
Before proceeding with any probe, the FTC is awaiting a decision by the Justice Department on whether it will challenge Google’s planned acquisition of ITA Software as a threat to competition in the travel-information search business, said the people.
An FTC investigation of Google, the world’s most popular search engine, “could be on par” with the scope of the Justice Department’s probe of Microsoft a decade ago, said Keith Hylton, an antitrust law professor at Boston University School of Law. Google “could fight the FTC, but that’s going to cost a lot of money and time.”
The FTC and Justice Department share responsibility for oversight of antitrust enforcement, and the outcome of the ITA deal may determine whether the two agencies will vie for control of a broader probe of Google, the people said. The two agencies sometimes negotiate which will handle major antitrust investigations, with the decision turning on their respective expertise.
The Justice Department may soon announce its decision on Google’s purchase of ITA, said the people familiar with the matter.
FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch said in an interview last month he supported a probe of the dominant players in the Internet-search industry, without specifying which companies. Rosch, one of two Republicans on the five-member commission, is the only commissioner to say publicly that such an investigation is in order.
The people familiar with the matter said any investigation of the search industry should concentrate on Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine.
If consumers don’t like what the company is doing, they can switch to another search engine, said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman.
