Here comes the Google antitrust case
The Justice Department is probably going to bring an antitrust suit against Google, experts are beginning to say. Yesterday, the department hired former Disney superlawyer Sandy Litvack to take a closer look at Yahoo's deal to outsource search to Google. “They wouldn’t bring in a special counsel unless they were preparing to litigate,” says Sam Miller, the lawyer who defended Microsoft's antitrust trial. Former FCC official Blair Levin agrees. Levin wrote in a Stifel Nicholas research note yesterday that "the hiring of a lawyer with this kind of background is far more rare, and, in our memory, the times when this has happened the Department brought a case." The irony: if the U.S. does win the case against Google, it won't be the search giant which feels the most pain. Yahoo would lose $250 million to $450 million in cash it's counting on raking in.