Google Faces Rising FTC Ire

Google may be wearing out its welcome with the Federal Trade Commission. Antitrust lawyers and other experts say the agency seems to be developing an institutional dislike for the company after pursuing a series of actions against it. If that's the case, it couldn't come at a worse time for Google, which is facing an ongoing antitrust investigation into the workings of its search engine.

Government antitrust lawyers as a matter of course adopt an adversarial stance toward the companies they investigate. But not every target becomes a white whale. It happened to Microsoft when government attorneys reached a point where they felt they could not believe anything the company said. Several former FTC attorneys contacted by National Journal suggested that the pileup of probes into Google could be breeding ill will among current staffers.