Mannerisms

If the US government parlays its anti-trust investigations against Google into legal proceedings, it will be one of the youngest-ever companies to be subjected to a US government anti-trust case.

Google was only founded in 1998. A ten year gap between founding and first anti-trust proceeding would be a US record.

After all it took 44 years after the founding of Standard Oil by John D Rockefeller in 1863 for the US government to initiate anti-trust proceedings in 1911.

It took a massive 89 years after the founding of AT&T in 1885 for the US government to split the company up into the Baby Bells in 1974 after anti-trust proceedings.

IBM went for 60 years after its founding in 1896 before anti-trust action by the US government forced it to operate under the Consent Decree of 1956 which obliged IBM to disclose technical information which allowed other computer companies to compete.

For Microsoft, founded in 1975, it was 23 years before the US government first initiated anti-trust proceedings in 1998.

So the ten year-old Google has been something of a phenomenon. Presumably it's happened quickly for Google because the Internet allows companies to grow to enormous size by very quickly tapping into global markets.