Levinson
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Arthur Levinson departs Google board amid FTC probe
We kind of doubt the departure of Genentech's former chief executive from Google's board of directors will close all of this out in the FTC's eyes, but if you were curious about the impact of said probe, here's your answer. Just two months after Google's Eric Schmidt peaced out from Apple's board due to a "conflict of interest," Arthur Levinson has left Google's board for presumably the same reason. Schmidt is still obviously fond of Sir Levinson, noting that he has "has been a key part of Google's success these past five years," and while he's exiting the board, he'll "always have a special place at Google." So, now that all of this is cleared up, can we finally move on without worrying that the aforementioned search giant will buy up the world's remaining inventory of dark fiber, fuse into Apple and create a telepathic iPod that would rule the world until the dawn of the Robot Apocalypse?[Via New York Times]
WaPo: DOJ preparing antitrust probe for Apple, among others
Apple, Google, Yahoo! and Genentech are subjects of a fresh antitrust investigation surrounding hiring and recruiting practices among companies in the tech industry, according to Washington Post staff writer Cecilia Kang. "By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly," antitrust experts said in the article. Hiring and recruiting can sometimes be a touchy affair, as Apple found out late last year when trying to hire Mark Papermaster. The investigation may suggest some kind of written agreement among large tech firms to not hire away each other's top talent. According to the New York Times, Justice has only requested documents for the ongoing investigation. Neither the Justice Department nor any of the companies mentioned in the story had any comment. This comes in addition to another Justice investigation into ties between the boards of directors of Apple and Google, and whether or not having Google CEO Eric Schmidt on both (and Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson on all three) constitutes antitrust violations. Some consider Apple and Google to be competitors in certain areas such as phone handsets. The Obama administration is stepping up efforts to investigate anti-competitive activity among high-tech companies, and is already investigating Google's deal with book authors to republish their work via Google Books. [Via AppleInsider]
LG & Mark Levinson launching two home theater systems at CES
We didn't have to wait long to hear more about Mark Levinson's partnership with LG, resulting in two new home theater systems to launch at CES 2008. No longer limited to audiophiles searching eBay auctions for discontinued equipment, the AP3133 and LHT888 promise a high end AV experience at "astonishing" -- albeit TBA -- prices. The AP3133 HTIB puts LG's Super Blu BH200 dual-format player at the heart of a 7.1-channel system with 150 watts x 7 ICEpower output, multi-input HDMI switching, Burr-Brown PCM and Audessey Auto Room Multi EQ adjustment. The LHT888 fulfills our needs for a champagne-glass styled HT system, with each speaker in a tapered, integrated pedestal, to math the 1080p upscaling, DivX / MP3 / JPEG / DVD playing 700W 5.1-channel receiver. Prices (and pics) are due at LG's press conference January 6th.
