AAPL & GOOG's Antitrust Charge

Highlights include Apple, Inc. (AAPL - Analyst Report), Google, Inc. (GOOG - Analyst Report), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT - Analyst Report), IBM Corp. (IBM - Analyst Report) and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (DD - Analyst Report).

The press has reported that Apple, Inc. (AAPL - Analyst Report) and Google, Inc. (GOOG - Analyst Report) are under investigation on anti-trust grounds (violation of the Clayton Act) due to interlocking boards of directors. There is a very simple solution -- the directors in question (Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson) should resign from their questionable boards.

However, Google is under fire on a number of counts, much as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT - Analyst Report) is, IBM Corp. (IBM - Analyst Report) was years ago and Du Pont (DD - Analyst Report) before that, merely because it has such a large market share in the eyes of the bureaucracy. It should be remembered that market dominance is not grounds for an anti-trust ruling. It is only when the company in question uses that dominance to prevent competition that anti-trust comes into play. There are other search engines -- do a search on Google ((:)) for a list (51,800,000 results).

Apple has a large market share in MP3 players, but is certainly not dominant. The iPhone has a small market share of the overall cellular phone market. Apple computers have less than 10% market share of all PCs. It is unlikely that Apple would ever enter the search engine software market. So Apple is not the target.