Check out AT&T's FREE camera phonesGoogle warns on Yahoo-Microsoft
Google's top lawyer has penned a letter outlining a number of concerns it sees if Microsoft's bid for Yahoo goes through.
In the letter, "Yahoo and the future of the Internet," Google chief legal officer David Drummond says that Microsoft's offer "raises troubling questions" given the company's monopolistic past.
"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another," Drummond said. "It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
Drummond warns that Microsoft could attempt the same things it did in in the PC market, ultimately stifling new ideas. It also says a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have an "overwhelming share" in instant messaging and Web mail.
"Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions--and consumers deserve satisfying answers," Drummond wrote.
Google and Microsoft frequently trade complaints on how the other is a monopoly and shouldn't be able to do whatever the other wants to do.
Perhaps, they just need a proper introduction to one another. Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, this is pot.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina.
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with purchase of DoubleClick
I sure as hell don't! Won't this risk starting this whole mess again ? Imagine finding that Yahoo sites like Flickr or others all of a sudden only working with IE and not firefox, or having code that only works on windows. This is their past behavior and time has proven that they are still like this (just look at the mess they made trying to force OOXML down peoples throat)
about potential impact on users or, their own future revenue
stream? If you think the former, I have a bridge for sale.
This is purely a US issue no matter how you spin it. Both companies are US based companies, so the only country that can be involved in discussions of any legal problems with the merger is the US. Would you expect Chile to have any legal bases if Sony offered to buy Nintendo? Of course not, because the outcome does not directly affect Chile. But I'm sure other countries won't get deeply involved, they'd probably only say if they have a vague disapproval if anything at all, because they know this isn't any of their business. And as far as I can tell, this isn't any of Google's business either.
Now tell me, what is Google know for? A search engine? Buying other people's ideas? Am I leaving anything out? It's not like Google promotes innovation either. And where do you get 90% of browsers? We know only about 91% of PCs run one form of Windows or another, which is the ONLY operating system that supports Internet Explorer. So even if all of the 9% that doesn't use Windows use Firefox (16.98% of internet users' browser of choice), that still means that 8% of Windows users use it. But we know that's not true, plus there are other browsers as well. So we know your number of people who surf using IE is completely false.
You really can't blame Microsoft if websites don't display properly. Microsoft has little influence about whether a site will show up correctly; and while yes the browser has to be coded correctly to display a page, but also the page has to be coded correctly. Two more thing, why wouldn't coders design their web pages to work the best on IE? It does have the greatest install base still. And OOXML is for Office 2007, it not a big thing when it comes to Microsoft wanting to buy Yahoo!.
The reality is, Google has become an unfriendly monster, and I'm more worried about them than I am Microsoft.
Lawyer Drummond's comments demonstrate that Google is afraid of competition. Google wants to fight in print and perhaps in court, but are afraid of to compete in the marketplace with Microsoft-Yahoo.
Lawyer Drummond knows that Google stock took a big dive last week. I suspect that is the real motivation behind his comments. There is more money for Google if they are able to retain their 60% market share. However,the public deserves choice, not the Google SE monopoly or their self-serving propaganda.
Regulators should force Microsoft to buy Yahoo, not restrict it from doing so. The public will benefit from the competition.
Yahoo! users, be prepared for the new Yahoo! home page:
<URL:http://www.kaizou.org/kaizou/60>