Careful now
The New York Times reported yesterday that the US Federal Trade Commision (FTC) has begun an investigation into whether Google and Apple are violating antitrust laws by sharing two board members.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is also on the Apple board, while the former CEO of Genentech - Arthur Levinson - is also on both. Google's board consists of ten members, while Apple's has only eight.
This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for some rarely enforced law preventing such a state of affairs if the companies compete with each other. With Google launching its Android mobile OS and Chrome web browser in recent years, it now directly competes with Apple's iPhone OS and its Safari web browser.
Given how spectacularly much of the corporate sector has got things wrong, not only during the banking crisis but regularly over the past decade, the current political climate is to assume the worst of big companies when any sniff of anti-competitive practice is detected. Just ask Microsoft and Intel.
This probably won't amount to much by itself; all it would take it for one of the two to resign from one of his posts to make it go away. However, it is a warning shot for Google considering its dominance of the search engine and online advertising markets.
Incidentally, Google has Intel CEO Paul Otellini as a board member, while Apple has politician and celebrity tree-hugger Al Gore on board, so to speak.
