Questions about the internet giant's dominance have been gathering steadily since the revelation that Christine Varney, who is Barack Obama's pick to take over the top antitrust job at the Department of Justice, has already talked about the subject.

"For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem," Varney is reported to have said during a panel discussion last summer. Google, she suggested, "has acquired a monopoly in internet online advertising".

Those comments, combined with Varney's background as a lawyer for Netscape in its epic case against Microsoft have led to speculation that the DoJ could be ready to set the ball rolling on an antitrust case that could potentially hamper Google in the same way that the interminable hearings stiffed Microsoft in the late 90s. But are they missing the point?

At Techdirt, Mike Masnik suggested that Google "doesn't have anything close to a monopoly". In the New York Times, meanwhile, Randall Stross made his point by showcasing the numbers; in 2005, Google had just 36.5% of the market, compared to Yahoo's 30%. "Today, however, that advantage is much wider, at 63 percent to 21 percent," he wrote.

(Meanwhile a small company called TradeComet added fuel to the fire by launching a suit against Google alleging discriminatory business tactics).

But perhaps the real question is why the Department of Justice, under the Obama administration, wouldn't consider investigating Google. After all, even though Obama has specifically said he wants to crack down on monopoly abuse, it was the Bush White House which presided over the Google/Yahoo case last year - which ended with Google pulling out of the deal under pressure.

Underneath the concerns and arguments about Varney's Google comments is an assumption that she has been nominated to the job Obama precisely because of her previous experience taking on a technology monopolist.

However, sources close to the Department have told me that it may be too easy to connect those dots and get the wrong picture. Google's an important company, for sure, and Varney's technology background is useful - but I'm told that she wasn't hired with a specific case in mind... and that the antitrust job wasn't even necessarily the role she wanted.

So will Google face a deeper antitrust investigation? It seems almost certain. After all, once the political posturing has been dispensed with, the fact remains: Google's one of the most important companies in the world - if antitrust lawyers aren't keeping their eyes on its business, who else should they be watching?