U.S. Bring in Foreign National to Attack Google?

Yesterday, I pointed S.M. Oliva's take on the odd hiring of a Brit, Dr. Alison Oldale, to head the Federal Trade Commission as Deputy Director for Antitrust in the Bureau of Economics.

News today that the FTC is, as WSJ puts it, "ready to formally declare war against Google" has Oliva thinking about the hiring of a foreign national and the coming attack on Google. Here's more from WSJ:

The Federal Trade Commission is poised to serve Google Inc. with civil subpoenas, according to people familiar with the matter, signaling the start of a wide-ranging, formal investigation into whether the Internet-search giant has abused its dominance on the Web.

The agency’s five-member panel of commissioners is preparing to send its formal demands for information to Google within days, these people said. They said other companies are likely to receive official requests for information about their dealings with Google at a later stage...The [FTC's] inquiry…will examine fundamental issues relating to Google’s core search-advertising business, said people familiar with the matter. The business is the source of most of Google’s revenue. The issues include whether Google—which accounts for around two-thirds of Internet searches in the U.S. and more abroad—unfairly channels users to its own growing network of services at the expense of rival providers.

In November, the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, opened its own formal investigation into allegations by several companies that Google had violated European competition laws. Google denies the allegations.

Here's Olivia on Oldale and the attack on Google.

A key player in the FTC’s investigation will be the Bureau of Economics antitrust unit — which is now headed by a British government official with extensive ties to European Union authorities. I suspected something was up yesterday, but now I think it’s clear: [FTC Chairman]Jon Leibowitz brought in a foreign economist to help oversee the Google investigation because he couldn’t trust any American economist to validate his insane obsession with destroying one of America’s most successful companies.