Google Chairman Eric Schmidt boasts to Bloomberg about the rapid proliferation of Google’s Android smartphone operating system, comparing it to Microsoft’s domination of the desktop platform in the 90s. And if everyone remembers the 90s correctly, the Department of Justice stepped in and smacked Microsoft around for antitrust violation, without which they would have no doubt strangled Google in its infancy.

Google is out there whispering in the ears of journalists that they are off the hook for search manipulation and that there are three solid votes in opposition to the FTC pursuing the case. Perhaps they know things nobody else does, but if it’s true, it will raise all kinds of questions about the agency’s balk, particularly with regard to commissioner Edith Ramirez.

Bloomberg is reporting today that the FTC may take a dive on exercising oversight of Google’s government-protected monopoly

Hollande was apparently not amused with this monopolistic high-handedness, and so today the French tax authorities filed a $1.3 billion dollar claim against Google to pressure them into a settlement, per France’s weekly Canard Enchaine.