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Sunday, 3rd February 2008
Google Questions Microsoft's Bid For Yahoo in Google Blog Post; Interview with Bill Gates on Potential Acquisition of Yahoo
UPDATE : Ballmer Touts Benefit of Yahoo Deal (via AP)
SB spoke to analysts in NYC on Monday.
UPDATE: Google Offers to Help Yahoo Fight Off Microsoft (via WSJ)
Google's Google's David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer says Microsoft's bid for Yahoo raises several, "raises troubling questions" in a new blog post on the Google weblog. It's also available in Spanish on the Google Latin America blog.
Issues identified by Drummond in his post:
It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
The post discusses proprietary monopolies, unfair practices/regulatory issues (as Microsoft has had to deal with in the past), etc. Drummond goes on to say:
Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.
Drummond points out that between MS and Yahoo, you have, "an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts." Rare that you read Google publicly using words like this especially since they offer and continue to develop and grow their own webmail (Gmail) and messenging (GTalk) tools. So why this public statement? The Wall Street Journal (subs only) has more.
From the article:
One person close to Google said it was concerned that there would be nothing to stop Microsoft, for example, from making Microsoft/Yahoo instant messaging services the first thing a consumer saw when they booted up their computer running Microsoft's Windows operating system or its Office productivity software.
Recently, Google has dealt with their own regulatory issues in the United States regarding their acquisition of DoubleClick advertising (the deal was recently approved by the FTC). They continue to deal with antitrust issues in Europe.
Source: Official Google Blog
UPDATE: Microsoft Has Replied with a News Release Discussing GOOG's Comments
See Also: Commentary and News from
+ NY Times
With Comments from Professor Eric Goldman.
+ TechCrunch,
+ GigaOm
+ PaidContent.
Rafat calls the blog post "ironic." Sounds about right to us.
Monitor TechMeme for More Commentary
See Also: Exclusive interview with Bill Gates on how Yahoo takeover will challenge Google (via Times of London)
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