European Union regulators want publishers and authors to weigh in on copyright issues with Google's book scanning and book search project, according to the Associated Press.
European Commission officials will meet with copyright holders on September 7 to discuss the search giant's $125 million proposed settlement with U.S. publishers and authors granting Google the right to digitize and publish books that are out of print but still protected by copyright law. The court overseeing the settlement has given authors a September 4 deadline to opt out individually if they don't not wish to participate. Google has negotiated many deals with some publishers for current works and is also digitizing public-domain works.
Critics complain that the deal, which is scheduled to be implemented in October, would effectively give Google a monopoly over books that are in copyright but out of print. Google argues that the agreement will make millions of books hidden on library shelves more accessible and give publishers and authors a new opportunity to profit from them.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice said it was launching a formal investigation into the proposed settlement.
A Google spokesperson told CNET News that the company will be at the EC meeting.
"What's currently planned is a fact-finding exercise by the Commission--not an investigation--and we're looking forward to taking part," the spokesperson said in an e-mail. "We agree with European Commissioner, Viviane Reding, when she said, "We should create a modern set of European rules that encourage the digitization of books."
Update 4:50 p.m. PDT: The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee also is considering a look at the matter, citing unknown people with whom the committee discussed its plans and a Google spokesman quoted as saying, "there's interest in having a hearing to explore the settlement."
Updated 2:42 p.m. PDT with background information on the settlement.
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Thursday that is has opened a formal investigation into the settlement between Google and book publishers over the digital publishing rights to certain books, citing antitrust concerns.
Such an investigation had been previously reported, and Google had confirmed that it had received requests from the government for information. But Judge Denny Chin, who is overseeing issues surrounding the settlement until it is implemented in October, received formal notice of an investigation Thursday from the DOJ and released the letter as part of the court docket concerning the case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
"The Antitrust Division is investigating the possibility of anticompetitive practices involving digital book intellectual property rights and distribution," said Gina Talamona, a DOJ representative. She declined to elaborate beyond that statement and the letter sent Thursday to Judge Chin.
Google issued a statement: "The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions. It's important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S."
Last October, Google settled a lawsuit filed by several publishing groups over its plan to digitize books through Google Books for $125 million. The settlement gave Google the right to digitize and publish books that are out of print but still protected by copyright law, forcing authors to opt out individually if they did not wish to participate. Google has negotiated deals with some publishers for current works, and is also digitizing public-domain works.
The settlement has drawn heated criticism from those who think Google was effectively handed a monopoly over these copyright-yet-out-of-print works, since anyone else who wished to publish those books would have to individually negotiate with their authors, many of whom can not be located very easily. Earlier this year Judge Chin extended the deadline for authors to decide whether they wish to participate in the settlement from May to September, with a final hearing scheduled to take place in October.
Google argues that any potential competitor who also wished to scan books could negotiate a deal with the Books Rights Registry, a nonprofit group set up as part of the settlement to represent the interests of authors. Some think that as a practical matter, however, Google's lead in this area is so beyond the reach of competitors as to discourage efforts to even try, and worry about the concentration of so much information in the hands of one company.
It has been an interesting year for Google and the federal government. After Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, publicly campaigned for President Obama last year, his administration has repaid the favor by taking a very close look at Google, beyond the book search settlement. The DOJ is reportedly looking into the hiring practices of several Silicon Valley companies, including Google, and the Federal Trade Commission has wondered if Schmidt's participation on Apple's board of directors is a conflict of interest given his participation on Google's board.
Google has shrugged off the concerns, noting that any large company should expect scrutiny from the federal government. Still, Google executives have embarked on a charm offensive of late, making the argument that Google really isn't that dominant a company and reminding everyone that the competition "is just a click away."
The letter from the DOJ is reproduced below:
SDNY Order DOJ Letter
Google, the company best equipped and most motivated to digitize the world's books, wants to offer the world an online Library of Alexandria. The decisions of the Justice Department, authors, book publishers, a federal judge, and Google itself likely will determine whether the company actually does.
Nobody in recent years has accused Google of lacking ambition, but its Google Book Search project is certainly among the company's top projects when it comes to chutzpah. That's not just because of the technical and financial hurdles of scanning, indexing, and displaying online millions of books, it's also because of the tangled intellectual property and legal concerns involved in the controversial project.
After revealing the book-search project in 2003, Google drew copyright infringement lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, but an October 2008 proposed settlement, now under review by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has converted those groups from adversaries to allies.
The settlement, if approved, could neatly cut a Gordian knot of copyright entanglements though setting Google back $125 million. That's because it would enable Google not only to display books that are out of copyright and those that are in print by cooperating publishers, as it does today, but also those from the vast collection of in-copyright brooks that are out of print--even when those holding rights to those books didn't specifically agree to Google's plan.
The complicated proposed settlement invoked the wrath of some authors concerned it would grant Google monopolistic power over online publishing, and the court extended the deadline for authors to choose whether to opt out of the settlement from May to September. Then the other shoe dropped this month: the Justice Department signaled serious antitrust scrutiny by issuing subpoena-like civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to check into the matter.
AIG and General Motors apparently are too big to fail. But the way the opposition to Google Book Search is shaping up, it looks like some believe Google is too big to succeed.
... Read moreSAN FRANCISCO--Google continued to lay the groundwork Wednesday for an antitrust defense in the event that the federal government decides to take a formal look at its core business.
U.S. regulators have been scrutinized parts of the company in recent months, probing topics such as Google CEO Eric Schmidt's role on Apple's board of directors and Google's proposed settlement with book publishers on Google Books. In that vein, the company one month ago kicked off an effort to burnish its image, calling on the press, members of Congress, ad agencies, and publishers to convince them that when it comes to its overall business, Google is a not a threat.
Inside a conference room in Google's San Francisco office, executives ran through essentially the same presentation leaked last month by the consumer activist group Consumer Watchdog, focusing most of their efforts on trying to paint a picture of Google as just one part of a large Internet ecosystem, as opposed to a dominant search giant.
"We do have to win users back on a regular basis," said Dana Wagner, senior competition counsel at Google. "We want to be the next Google; we're not done with search."
Even though its name is widely used as a verb to describe "Internet search," Google argued that it faces competition from places like Amazon and eBay, where potential customers also search for information about a product. It likewise compared its earnings data--revenues, profits, and lobbying budget--to some of America's largest technology companies, such as Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, and IBM, with far more resources than Google.
Executives also noted that Google competes for advertising dollars against essentially the entire world. Television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and other Internet companies all want advertising dollars too, and Google's share of the total ad revenue market is just 3 percent, said Peter Greenberger, industry relations manager. Its share of the total Internet ad revenue is 30 percent, the largest single piece of that pie.
These are all clear signs that Google would attempt to paint the relevant market in any antitrust case it may face in the future as extremely broad. That's one of the first battlegrounds in which lawyers for Google and the Justice Department would face off, and really a key part of any antitrust case.
Several years ago, enterprise software-maker Oracle successfully made a similar argument in an antitrust fight over the eventual acquisition of rival PeopleSoft. While Justice lawyers attempted to narrowly define the market for software suites intended for multinational corporations, Oracle argued that the Web and upstart competitors made such a narrow definition impossible.
There's little question of Google's dominance in search. Its share of the search market is around 64 percent, and its revenue share of search advertising is higher, in the high 60s or low 70s, a Google representative estimated. Microsoft is making a renewed commitment to competing against Google in search that might have already paid off in the form of a point or two of market share gain, but that only gives it 11.1 percent.
So there's a question how tough the competition really is. Some wonder if Yahoo, the distant second in search, is willing to take on Google in its back yard under new CEO Carol Bartz.
Another point made by Google is that competitive search providers on the Internet "are just a click away," a phrase that has been repeated ad nauseum by Google executives since its goodwill tour began in May. It resonates because it's true: anyone dissatisfied with their search results can easily type yahoo.com or bing.com into their browsers, something Microsoft is counting on with its huge ad campaign around Bing. Unlike desktop software or corporate applications, there's little "lock-in" on a search engine.
However, any scrutiny on this score is likely to center around competition in search advertising, not search queries, as was the case last year when Yahoo and Google got within hours of finalizing a deal to let Google's AdSense technology place ads on Yahoo's sites before Google backed out over concern the Justice Department would scuttle the deal.
Wagner insisted that the potential Yahoo deal "had nothing to do with search. It was an advertising partnership." Google backed out of the deal because it realized it would have to take on a very public fight with a government agency to make the deal happen, and it was worried about the effect on its brand should it go down that road, he said.
That comes to one of the core parts of Google's argument: the company is trying to make the case that because of its principles and philosophies, it can be trusted to do the right thing despite its position in the market.
"If there was ever a situation in which Google had a legal fight with an agency, it's because we were doing something that was good for our users and good for the economy," Wagner said. "There's a lot of companies for which I wouldn't do this job. I would not be doing this at Halliburton."
The Justice Department may not buy that line of thinking. The new assistant attorney general for antitrust, Christine Varney, was quoted last year as saying, "I think we're going to continually to see a problem, potentially, with Google, who I think so far has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising lawfully."
Now, in the very next sentence, Varney was careful to note: "I do not think they have done anything other than be a spectacular, innovative company." Nonetheless, there's a reason why Google is on a charm offensive.
RealNetworks has accused the major film studios of antitrust violations in documents filed Wednesday with a federal court.
RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser
(Credit: RealNetworks)Real, a software company known best for the company's video and music player, has asked U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel for permission to file an amended second complaint against the six largest film studios as well as Viacom, the entertainment conglomerate and parent company of Parmount Pictures.
Real has been involved in a legal conflict with Hollywood over its release last year of RealDVD, a software that duplicates DVDs and stores the copies on a computer hard drive. The Motion Picture Association of America claims that RealDVD violates copyright law. The two sides have met in court this month so Patel could determine whether to remove an injunction placed on the sale of RealDVD. She halted sales last September, days after the software first went on sale.
An MPAA representative was not immediately available and a Real spokesman declined to comment.
In the latest filing, Real accuses the studios as well as the DVD Copy Control Association, a group dedicated to protecting DVDs from piracy, of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, the federal statute designed to limit cartels and monopolies.
"RealNetworks has become aware of facts demonstrating that the DVD CCA and the Studio Defendants have engaged in both a horizontal group boycott of RealNetworks," Real said in it's filing. "The testimony of the Studio Defendants during the preliminary injunction hearing further confirmed the existence of a horizontal conspiracy."
Real alleged in the document that the studios were guilty of anti-competitive practices when they agreed to block anyone from making copies of DVDs without their say so.
"(The witnesses) unambiguously," Real said in the court filing,"confirmed the Studios' position that the (Content Scrambling System) License Agreement (which is needed to legally make copies of DVDs) resulted from a joint agreement among the Studios to prohibit all copies of DVD content unless the Studios jointly authorize the making of such a copy."
More to come
The Justice Department is examining antitrust issues regarding a proposed settlement of Google Book Search lawsuits with the search giant, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
It's unclear what might come of the reported talks, but the Justice Department is not to be treated lightly. The department leads enforcement of antitrust law, and Google backed down from its threatened antitrust lawsuit against it in 2008 regarding a search-ad partnership with Yahoo.
The proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, announced in October, would among other things give Google the right to show content from books online that are still in copyright but that are no longer in print. In addition, those copyright holders could be paid for online sales of their books.
Authors and publishers may opt out of the proposed settlement, but if they do nothing, they're considered part of it. That includes authors who can't be located.
Google has book-search agreements in place with numerous publishers, but the company hopes that the settlement will permit it to bring many more books to into its service. But in a tactical victory on Tuesday for settlement opponents, a judge gave authors four more months to decide whether to participate.
Antitrust issues have arisen in the Book Search case. One notable voice is Harvard University's head librarian, Robert Darnton, who in a February article in the New York Review of Books worried about the control Google would get through the settlement.
"The class-action character of the settlement makes Google invulnerable to competition," he said. "Most book authors and publishers who own U.S. copyrights are automatically covered by the settlement. They can opt out of it; but whatever they do, no new digitizing enterprise can get off the ground without winning their assent one by one, a practical impossibility, or without becoming mired down in another class action suit. If approved by the court--a process that could take as much as two years--the settlement will give Google control over the digitizing of virtually all books covered by copyright in the United States."
However, Paul Courant, though, dean of libraries at the University of Michigan--a Google Book Search Partner and fan of the proposed settlement--objected to Darnton's view. "His view of the world that will likely emerge as a result of Google's scanning of copyrighted works is a dystopian fantasy," Courant said.
Google and the Justice Department didn't immediately comment on the report.
Updated at 9:47 a.m. PST, with details about the likelihood of any potential Yahoo overture to Microsoft.
If Yahoo wants to get Microsoft back to the negotiating table, it would do well to try the lure of a search-only deal--regardless of whether Jerry Yang is CEO.
That's the assessment from one influential Microsoft source.
"If Jerry was still CEO and called Steve tomorrow and said, let's talk about a search-only deal, I think Steve would listen," said the source. "Microsoft is open to a mutually beneficial search deal. But people are still lusting after a Yahoo (buyout) and no one is thinking about that in Redmond. There's been no discussion of it for months and months."
Apparently, the "lust" is still alive. In early morning trading Tuesday, as the stock market opened in the wake of the news that Jerry Yang will be stepping down as CEO, Yahoo's shares soared nearly 12 percent to $11.90 a share. Meanwhile, analysts churned out research notes speculating that Microsoft may come back with an offer to buy the entire company.
Yahoo's shares leaped early Tuesday on news that Jerry Yang would be stepping down as CEO.
(Credit: Yahoo Finance)Analyst Benjamin Schachter at UBS noted in a report:
We still believe Microsoft will eventually own Yahoo. Jerry moving out of the CEO role may accelerate this. Yahoo is a key strategic asset in the online space and given the scarcity of key players of size, we see value here not reflected in the stock's current valuation.
UBS has a price target of $18 a share for Yahoo.
Analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein said in his research note that Yang's resignation is a good sign, because it demonstrates Yahoo's board is frustrated with the company's performance and management. He further notes:
It is a signal they are prepared to examine more deal options, in particular with Microsoft.
Back in May, Microsoft walked away from the negotiating table after sweetening its initial unsolicited buyout bid for the entire company from $31 a share to $33 a share. But when Yahoo countered with a proposal of $37 a share, Microsoft ended its buyout talks for the entire company.
Yahoo's stock had closed at $19.18 a share on the day before Microsoft announced its $31 a share buyout offer.
The source noted that Yahoo and its investors should bury the notion of a full-up, or entire buyout, of all of Yahoo. If Yahoo were to come to the Redmond giant with a search-only buyout or a search-only partnership, however, that would get its attention--whether it's delivered by Yang or not.
And the source added that any expectation on Yahoo's part to reclaim the approximately $8 billion to $10 billion Microsoft had offered back in late May under its previous search-only, or "hybrid," deal would be a faulty assumption.
Yahoo's shares were trading in the $27 a share range when Microsoft submitted its search-only proposal. Yahoo's shares closed Monday at $10.63 a share.
"Microsoft would not be willing to buy Yahoo's search business at the price offered back in May," said the source.
Should Yahoo take the initiative and approach Microsoft with a search-only partnership, joint-venture, or proposal to sell just its search business, the source offered up one piece of advice to make the process smooth.
"Consistently, Yahoo's board didn't believe Steve. A hundred percent of everything he said in public was what he thought," said the source. "If people go back and carefully read his public statements, they'll see that what Steve said is what Redmond has been thinking."
Microsoft will likely have to wait awhile for any overtures from the Internet search pioneer, said one source familiar with Yahoo's thinking.
Yahoo is launching a CEO search and, as a result, would want to receive input from the new executive on whether it makes sense to approach Microsoft about a search-only deal or partnership.
As previously reported, the companies have not been in recent contact to date.
See also:
• Yahoo CEO Yang to step down
• Yahoo's ultimate search: A new CEO
• Yang's travails: A Yahoo timeline
• A pity for Yahoo that John McCain didn't win
• Jerry Yang memo to staff about stepping down
Yahoo has no search advertising deal with Google, and ditto for its disappointment in luring Microsoft back to the table for an outright buyout of the entire company. But what it does have to show for its efforts is a $73 million bill to outside advisers, according to the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to the SEC filing, filed last week, here are the various components that make up the $73 million bill:
Income from operations for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2008 includes incremental costs of $37 million and $73 million, respectively, for outside advisers related to Microsoft's ("Microsoft") proposals to acquire all or a part of the company, other strategic alternatives, including the Google agreement, the proxy contest, and related litigation defense costs.
The Internet search pioneer began accruing its bill back in February, when Microsoft launched its unsolicited buyout bid to acquire the entire company for $31 a share. That offer was later upped to $33 a share, but withdrawn in May after Yahoo countered with a $37 a share price and time had, in essence, lapsed to complete a deal before a change in presidents.
When Microsoft stepped away from the negotiating table, Yahoo faced another fight on its hands when shareholder activist Carl Icahn launched a proxy fight against the company to gain control of the board. Ultimately, the parties settled and Icahn and two representatives from his dissident directors slate in the Yahoo proxy fight were named to the Internet search pioneer's board of directors.
Meanwhile, more recently, the company's search advertising deal with Google, which was discussed when Microsoft was still in the hunt for the Internet company, fell by the wayside this month after antitrust regulators said they would file a lawsuit to block the deal and Google opted to step back from the agreement.
While those various expenses have subsided, one continuing cost for Yahoo is defending itself against the number of shareholder lawsuits that were filed after it rejected Microsoft's initial $31 a share bid and its sweetened $33 a share offer.
When Microsoft made its first offer in February, Yahoo's stock was trading in the high $14 a share range. Today, the stock is trading in the low $11 a share range.
Yahoo shares went into a free fall Friday morning, following comments made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that the software giant would not make a renewed bid for Yahoo.
Shares of Yahoo plummeted as low as 16.5 percent in Friday trading, landing as low as $11.65 a share.
Ballmer, speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia , said:
Look, we made an offer, we made another offer. It was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us, and we moved on.
We are not interested in going back and relooking at an acquisition...I don't know why they would be either, frankly.
Investors apparently were holding out hope deal talks would be reignited, after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang on Wednesday said at the Web 2.0 conference that Yahoo was willing to sell the company to Microsoft:
To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo. I don't think that is a bad idea at all...at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company.
We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren't that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company.
Yang made those comments on the same day that Google walked away from their planned search advertising partnership, after federal antitrust regulators informed the companies it would file a lawsuit to block the deal should they proceed.
Yahoo, which had hoped to generate $800 million in revenue in the first year of that search advertising agreement, unveiled the Google partnership plans last June, within hours after announcing buyout talks with Microsoft were over and the software giant was no longer interested in acquiring the company at its previous offer of $33 a share. Yahoo had countered with $37 a share, before Microsoft walked away.
But Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst for Collins Stewart, noted in a research report Friday that the market is overreacting to Ballmer's comments:
We do not view Ballmer's comments about no interest in (a Yahoo) acquisition as an incremental data point. What is more important and incremental is that CEO Ballmer's comments are providing clear endorsement that (Microsoft) is still very interested in a search only deal (a clear positive for Yahoo). Since Microsoft walked away from YHOO on June 12, we have been consistently highlighting that Microsoft will very likely come back but for a search only deal and we stand by our thesis. Investors do not have to see a full YHOO acquisition right now to realize full and fair value for YHOO and a search only deal by Microsoft can provide material upside to the shares of YHOO. We believe that MSFT's search proposal can give $8 to $10 per share lift to Yahoo even based on very simple and achievable economics.
We will take today's weakness in the shares of YHOO as an opportunity to get into YHOO as Yahoo offers material option value for its search business, especially now that we all know that MSFT continues to be very interested in that business.
We expect to see a search-only deal proposal from Microsoft. This proposal may not be as lucrative as the one we saw on May 29, but it can still give $8 to $10 per share lift to YHOO. We believe that a new proposal from MSFT is a very near-term event.
We would highlight four reasons (for Yahoo to accept a search-only deal from Microsoft) 1) No material upside to the shares of YHOO on fundamental basis but a possible search deal with MSFT can easily give $8 to $10 per share lift, 2) Google continues to make YHOO less relevant in search and it is better to get a premium for the search business now from MSFT before it is too late, 3) Core search is emerging as a duopoly and companies that are willing to invest billions in Cap-Ex and deploy thousands of engineers will emerge as the top providers and YHOO has not made and cannot make that level of investments, and 4) a shift of focus from search to the rest of the businesses can help YHOO's management to provide investors a material upside in valuation in the next two to three years with laser focus and unparallel execution.
Yahoo investors have been on a wild ride this year, with every comment from Ballmer and Yang sending the stock on roller-coaster ups and downs.
Yang's comments regarding Microsoft on Wednesday sent Yahoo's shares up as much as 11 percent to $14.84 a share, despite the duel announcement that the Google deal was over.
Early Wednesday morning, the Department of Justice notified Yahoo and Google that if they proceeded with their controversial search agreement, it would file a lawsuit to block the deal.
In some ways, the DOJ's decision was not terribly surprising. Over the past two or three weeks, federal antitrust regulators became increasingly wary of the agreement and, in particular, tested Google's resolve to remain in the deal, according to sources. Over the past few weeks, the give-and-take of negotiations between the parties seemed to be forward progress, but faltered as government regulators became increasingly unyielding in their demands.
"Up until a few weeks ago, there was a lot of back and forth," said one source. "After that, they began turning everything down."
Regulators, however, did not view it their role to advise the companies on how best to get the deal passed. Rather, sources said, they were there to evaluate the deal, as it was presented to them and any future versions that were submitted.
"We dealt with the (companies') proposals, as they made them...The suggestions for changes came from them," noted a source, who added that many of the things Yahoo and Google proposed were found to be anti-competitive.
Then things headed further south. Regulators, at one point two or three weeks ago, told Google that if it pursued a lawsuit to block the deal, it may consider adding a monopolization count against Google to the complaint, which in essence would allege the search giant of using its monopoly power in a relevant market. Apparently that hit a nerve with the search giant, noted a source, and it became evident to regulators that Google's resolve to fight a legal battle was wavering, rather than face the prospect of being saddled with the label of a monopolist and all the regulatory oversight that could potentially come with it.
Under its initial 10-year agreement announced in June, Yahoo would run Google's paid search ads on its own search pages and those of other third-party publishers. In return, Yahoo would get a cut of the advertising revenue.
Although the initial agreement did not call for caps that would limit the number of times Yahoo could run Google search ads on its own search pages, the companies increasingly began throwing out lower and lower caps to appease regulators, who were concerned Yahoo would either turn over its entire search advertising business to Google, or exit the business altogether, sources said.
While regulators, to some degree, appreciated the companies cutting their 10-year agreement to 4 years and then eventually 2, the caps increasingly became a tough pill to swallow.
In the last revised proposal before terminating the agreement, the companies had offered to not only limit the deal to two years, but also put a 25 percent cap on the amount of revenue Yahoo could receive from Google under the arrangement.
But there was nothing in the deal that would have prevented Yahoo, for example, from applying its 25 percent cap to a specific category of Yahoo's search advertising, thereby concentrating Google's presence in a particular part of Yahoo's search platform. The companies, however, did not see the benefit to advertisers, nor themselves, in using randomized search on Yahoo's search pages.
"Prior to two or three weeks ago, it seemed the regulators thought the cap was a promising solution," said a source. "But that changed over the last couple of weeks. Now, all sorts of problems were being identified with it."
During the course of the review process, the companies had extended the 100-day deadline it set in June from October 8 to October 22, as talks progressed among the parties. But as the latest extension deadline approached Wednesday, it became evident no further extensions were needed.
"In the last 24 hours, we really began to understand that the DOJ would not accept any deal under any terms," said a source.
No surprise, then, that the DOJ informed the companies Wednesday morning it would challenge a deal if they moved forward, resulting in Google backing away from the deal.
