According to a recent Wall Street Journal article:
Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google—and are well into planning for litigation, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said.
Reporter Casey Newton with The Verge asks:
Is the antitrust action against Google about its advertising business, or about its search business?
This is when the media call on experts, and any company(ies) in question needs to be aware of what’s being said.
Former Microsoft COO Bob Herbold warns Google to brace for a protracted period of pain:
Herbold knows first hand what it’s like when the anti-trust enforcers pounce. You may recall it happened to Microsoft in 1998:
Now, the question is, does the government have a case? Herbold’s experience adds weight to his answer, creating and influencing impressions:
In this interview, Herbold repeatedly alludes to secrecy at Google. And, based on the next question, he says it goes well beyond the advertising issues:
So what’s happened here? Fox Business elicited comments from Bob Herbold, leaning on his years of experience at Microsoft and the Justice Department attempt to split that company in two when he was the COO.
Herbold makes a strong case predicting that Google is in for a very long, painful period in its legal fight with Justice and the nation’s 50 attorneys general. He emphasizes that Google has a very secretive way of operating its advertising and search functions, and due to its size and the size of the markets it controls, enabling the company to inflate advertising fees and give access to bad, often fake information on its search platform.
These are impressions that are being made on some very important audiences who likely were watching, including stockholders, analysts, financial advisors, Google executives and employees, and interested competitors.
For its part, Google needs to know what’s being said, how it is being positioned by third parties in the media, and be prepared with its own messages.
Which raises the question of whether or how you are monitoring what’s being said about you and your business, and how prepared are you to respond?