According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Department of Justice is considering an antitrust lawsuit against Google because of the company’s advertising strength. The government has hired a top trial attorney, deposed witnesses, and issued subpoenas.

Although I’m not an antitrust lawyer, I’m at a loss to see how Google has anything close to a monopoly in online advertising. If its terms become too burdensome, smaller competitors will grow at its expense. Let the free market handle the issue for now.

If the government goes after Google (using your tax dollars to fund it), expect a repeat of the Microsoft antitrust debacle that made alot of lawyers and lobbyists rich but did absolutely nothing to Microsoft’s market share. Microsoft inflicted far more damage on itself by releasing Vista than the government ever did through years of litigation.

Whether you like Google or not isn’t the point. If the company is taken down or wounded by the government, the next target could be something you care about…maybe even your online business.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of "Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed," "How to Create Your Own Internet Business Without a Lawyer for Under $175," and the creator of Website Legal Forms Generator^TM. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.