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Christine Varney, the head of the Internet Practice Group at Hogan & Hartson (firm profile here), recently was nominated to be the Assistant Attorney General for DOJ in the Antitrust Division. Varney — who served in the Obama transition — spoke out last year about potential antitrust concerns with Google. According to Bloomberg:
“For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem,” Varney said at a June 19 panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute. The U.S. economy will “continually see a problem — potentially with Google” because it already “has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising,” she said.
Although the statements were made before Varney was named to the Obama transition team or, certainly, to the DOJ post, her views on the matter were given at the American Antitrust Institute conference and appear not to be client-based statements. As such, it would seem to be that these are her honest views — and, potentially, a signal of an area where the Obama Administration may look to enforce antitrust laws in the coming years.
Some red meat from Varney might get “the market is the best regulator” folks quite concerned:
Varney had invited outside groups like the American Antitrust Institute to help the next administration find ways to enforce the anti-monopolization provision of the Sherman Antitrust Act, known as Section 2, “in a meaningful way in the coming decade given the way the economy is going.”
“Telling a liberal Democrat to go out and enforce Section 2 is a little bit like telling a Catholic ‘do not sin.’ Yeah, we want to do that,” she said.
Because the Bush administration Justice Department hadn’t brought any anti-monopolization cases, it has ceded the field to European authorities, she said.
Having seen state regulators concerned on many ocassions with the DOJ’s lack of action in the antitrust field during the Bush Administration, an active federal antitrust division would allow state antitrust regulators to focus more on state concerns than needing to take on national fights.
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
The Sherman Act is so very vague. If a company finds effective ways of expanding, why should that be punished? Smaller companies will always at some point develop into large, powerful corporations if they have a good business strategy and have a product or service that people want.