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Decision on Google case to come soon, FTC chairman says
By Leah Nylen and Can Celik ( May 31, 2012, 19:00 GMT | Insight) -- Washington – The head of the Federal Trade Commission said the agency will decide “in the not too distant future” whether to bring a case against Google for anticompetitive conduct in the search market.
Speaking at a technology conference* in California Thursday, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz also discounted rumors that the hiring of an outside litigator indicated the agency intended to go to trial.
“The search results on Google have changed or evolved over the years - that they may be anticompetitive,” Leibowitz said. “We're trying to figure out if the evidence is there and what the theories are.”
A decision on whether to bring a case will be coming “in the not too distant future,” he said.
Last month, the FTC hired Beth Wilkinson, a partner at Paul Weiss in Washington, to assist with its probe. A former Justice Department prosecutor, Wilkinson is best-known for the successful prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers.
Wilkinson’s hiring “doesn’t mean we decided to bring a case at all. It just means we have very competent counsel that can go toe-to-toe with their very competent counsel,” Leibowitz said.
Wilkinson is a “terrific litigator” who offers an outside perspective for the commission, he added.
The chairman's comments Thursday were largely consistent with those he made in San Francisco last month, when he said, "the commission has not decided what, if anything, we’re going to do" on the Google antitrust investigation....
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