"There's no question that [Microsoft] is the impetus behind this in the first place," said Manne, also a lecturer at Lewis and Clark Law School. "I don't know that Yahoo has been doing this but Microsoft certainly has been spending an enormous amount of time with agencies and legislatures, trying to get them to bring a case against Google. They are complaining and want a case to be brought because of only one thing -- they think they will be benefit and Google will be harmed."

Olds added that the FTC's initial probe into Google could make for some interesting shifts in the search market down the road.

"I think that this might tamp down Google's aggressiveness a bit, but we'll have to wait to see for sure," said Olds.

"The thing to keep in mind is that it isn't illegal to have a monopoly. It's illegal to abuse monopoly power," he said. "This preliminary phase is just the FTC deciding if there is enough evidence of anti-competitive abuse to justify opening up a formal investigation, [which] could take a year or longer to decide."

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at , or subscribe to . Her e-mail address is .