Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 05 May 2009 14:11
IT Policy -
Regulation
Page 1 of 2
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly investigating whether the presence of two people on the boards of both Apple and Google constitutes a breach of antitrust laws. The individuals in question are Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson.
US law prohibits a person sitting on the boards of two companies if that would reduce competition between them.
Schmidt is CEO of Google. His entry on Apple's board web page links to the Google web site, which makes no mention of his Apple directorship.
Levinson's biographic notes are missing Genentech web site, resulting in a broken link from Apple's board page. According to Google's corporate site, he has served on the Google board since 2004 and on Apple's since 2000. He is also the chairman and CEO of Genentech.
The most obvious area of possible competition is that Apple sells the iPhone and Google develops the Android platform used by a few mobile phone manufacturers.
Presumably the sort of situation the FTC would be looking for might be a deal - implicit or explicit - that meant Apple would not licence the iPhone OS to another phone vendor, and in return Google would not sell Android phones.
Mind you, in recent years Apple has shown very little inclination to licence its platforms to other companies.
Where else do the two companies compete? See
page 2.
