Report: U.S. hires Google-Yahoo! litigator

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department has hired a litigator and may challenge Google Inc.'s ad deal with Yahoo! Inc., The Wall Street Journal said Monday.

The litigator, Sanford Litvack, is a former vice chairman of the Walt Disney Co. and headed the antitrust division in the Justice Department under former President Jimmy Carter.

Under a search-engine advertising agreement between Google and Yahoo!, the two companies would control more than 80 percent of U.S. online-search ads.

Citing lawyers close to the situation, the newspaper said U.S. investigators have been taking witness depositions and issuing subpoenas for documents to support a possible challenge to the deal. That does not necessarily indicate a case will be brought, the Journal said.

However, the department has asked Litvack to examine the material and put together a case if a decision is reached to pursue the matter, the lawyers told the Journal.

Since the Google-Yahoo! deal was struck in June, the firms have said they would wait for a Department of Justice review before acting on it. The deal, which Yahoo! said is worth $800 million annually, allows the companies to share ad revenues, with Google supplying ads for some Yahoo! Internet searches.