

United States v. Google Inc. and ITA Software, Inc. - woodall
http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/google.html

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cpr
Fascinating. If you read the stipulation, you find out that these legal
notices can now be served (itself a legal concept) via email to the principal
parties.

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nl
I thought the justice dept approved it with conditions? See, for example
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gxkMxcbM-...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gxkMxcbM-
SIyRY9LObDEF4tTgFjQ?docId=CNG.089cd5d5dc7c45baf62971692489ae8d.f1)

Edit: I see now that this is just the actual conditions. Not as interesting as
I thought it was going to be

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martincmartin
I believe the way they enforce those conditions is to file a lawsuit to block
the merger as it was (without conditions), then also file a proposed
settlement that's agreed to by both the Justice dept and Google/ITA, that
contains the conditions.

I suppose it's possible for the court to reject the settlement, but it seems
incredibly unlikely.

~~~
metageek
> _I believe the way they enforce those conditions is to file a lawsuit_

Yes, that's what happened.

> _I suppose it's possible for the court to reject the settlement_

I know I've heard of it happening.

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charlieflowers
tl;dr -- can someone summarize it?

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Osiris
The Justice Department is suing Google and ITA to block the merger by
requesting that the court determine that it violates the Clayton Act.

The claim is that ITA's QPX product is the most advanced and successful of all
the available P&S systems (airfare pricing and shopping systems). There are 4
other competitors, including Expedia (which doesn't license their software).

QPX is used by competitors to Google, such as Microsoft.

If Google were to acquire ITA, Google would have an incentive to block access
to QPX from competitors, and thus exercise an unfair advantage over the
competition.

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shrikant
_If Google were to acquire ITA, Google would have an incentive to block access
to QPX from competitors, and thus exercise an unfair advantage over the
competition._

So anti-trust cases can be filed for even _potentially_ monopolistic
behaviour? Seems a little like pre-crime to me. Or does "prevention is better
than cure" come up trumps here?

~~~
esoteriq
IN a way you're right. I assume it's because once a monopoly exists or once
antitrust practices occur, the damage is irreversible. A company wiped out
because of some other company's illegal actions can never return to its
"former glory".

Also, it's a "reasonable probability" that the illegal actions would occur and
that's enough in this context.

That's my guess anyway.

