When Google needed government sign-off on a 2007 acquisition that would tighten its grip on the digital advertising market, the company turned to antitrust attorney and lobbyist Makan Delrahim. Now, Delrahim could be the one to undo it all
When Google needed government sign-off on a 2007 acquisition that would tighten its grip on the digital advertising market, the company turned to antitrust attorney and lobbyist Makan Delrahim to help get the job done.Story Continued Below
weeks ago for a possible probe of the company, and Delrahim has already drawn a harder line than many antitrust observers had expected in opposing the accumulation of corporate power.his staff waged last year in an attempt to stop AT&T from gobbling up entertainment provider Time Warner, an $85 billion merger that gave control over a vast arsenal of film and television programming to a major internet, pay-TV and satellite provider.
Delrahim himself has spoken more critically of the industry of late. He told an antitrust conference last month in Israel that “the current landscape suggests there are only one or two significant players in important digital spaces,” including internet search and social networking — a not-so-veiled reference to Google and Facebook.
After leaving the DOJ, Delrahim spent more than a decade at Brownstein. In addition to Google, he also registered to lobby for other major tech corporations, namely Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm and Oracle. Delrahim’s lobbying efforts focused largely on Capitol Hill, where he had worked for five years on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the person familiar with Google's D.C. strategy said.
The regulators’ logic looks naive in retrospect, Google's critics say. It's clear now that the DoubleClick deal helped the company consolidate power in the online ad business, said Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at Open Markets Institute, a liberal think tank that wants increased antitrust scrutiny of the big tech companies.
Google declined to comment for this story. CEO Sundar Pichai told CNN in June that large companies expect to face scrutiny, but he argued that big is not necessarily bad, saying Google’s size allows it to innovate with emerging technologies. Google has also said it faces competition from Facebook and Amazon in the digital advertising market.
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