Taking into account that Germany was until last year world’s number one exporter, this kind of attitude towards Google/Microsoft is very alarming. German administrations have a strong record for balanced view of economic affairs and their economic prowess is a sign of good economic management. Their position against certain corporations or products is most likely going to be justified by rational analysis rather than political motivation.

The bad news is the Google taking over the search engine market is going to be as bad as Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop market. I would agree with the conclusions of the German justice ministry since not forcing Google to have competitive behavior will end-up as being very costly for the search engine and maybe the Internet industry.

History shows that the US was involved in many antitrust actions (think of AT&T). How come it is slowing down now? Simple answer: globalization. Competition going global, the American government does not oversee market at national level anymore. Today, American companies must compete on a global scale, against emerging countries that have a very centralized view of the economy (ex: China). In other words, American companies might end up against players that own near 100% of their local market.

Having to face this situation, American policy makers have decided to adopt a laissez-faire strategy that will lead to more merges and serious restructuring of some industries. The idea is to have a couple of big players with unmatchable potential for economies of scales.These players will be the undisputed market leaders in their sector.

While this is good news for American companies, it is quite different for the Europeans. If American companies get bigger and more competitive, then European companies might start having problems in their own markets. This is precisely why European policy makers are pushing for antitrust legislation to be exercised upon major American antitrust activities.