timmer: ideas

Certainly, antitrust scrutiny is a growing worry at the Googleplex. Last year, the company abandoned a proposed advertising pact with Yahoo when the Justice Department said it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. Last week, a small Web site operator, TradeComet.com, filed an antitrust suit against Google, accusing it of unfairly manipulating its advertising system to harm a potential competitor. And when I asked to speak with Google’s chief economist about why Google’s market share gains were accelerating, Google’s press office also gave me, unrequested, a second, separate appointment with Dana Wagner, the company’s “competition counsel” — that is, its point person on antitrust issues.