Google may face anti-trust probes in Ohio, Wisconsin

Google, operator of the world’s biggest search engine, faces possible anti-trust probes by Ohio and Wisconsin over its business practices, according to a state official and a person familiar with the matters.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is “evaluating the facts to determine if it’s something we want to review,” Dan Tierney, his spokesman, said. In Wisconsin, Attorney General J B Van Hollen is weighing a probe of Google’s bid to buy ITA Software, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified because the process isn’t public. The US Justice Department is already reviewing the deal.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, faces growing scrutiny by anti-trust regulators as it bolsters its search business and expands into areas such as mobile advertising. Officials in Texas, the first state to open its own probe of Microsoft in 1997, are also questioning Google.

“In the Microsoft case, there was a constant drumbeat from the states,” Harry First, a professor at New York University School of Law in Manhattan, said of the anti-trust suit brought by states and the US in 1998. “Their intent was to hold the Justice Department’s feet to the fire,” said First, who ran New York state’s anti-trust bureau during Microsoft’s appeal.

Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman, said the company is answering inquiries from the Texas attorney general and the European Commission, which is investigating whether Google skews search results to benefit its own services. He declined to comment on possible action by the states.

‘A mess’
“If they got two or three different decrees they had to comply with, it would be a mess,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of anti-trust law at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City. “Google operates in a worldwide market. If they have to change their policies for Texas, that’s a mess.”

The year after Texas opened its probe of Microsoft, 20 states joined an anti-trust lawsuit against the software maker alongside the Justice Department. The Redmond, Washington-based company’s anti-trust troubles started in 1990 with an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Justice Department took over the probe in 1993. Neither the Justice Department nor the FTC is pursuing a broad anti-trust inquiry of Google.