Google's top brass are meeting on Monday to figure out a response to how Microsoft's new overtures toward Yahoo affect Google's potential ad deal with Yahoo.
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, speaking to reporters at a Google Zeitgeist event in the UK, said he's meeting with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin on the matter, according to the Times Online. "After this press conference the three of us will meet and decide what our response is," Schmidt said.
Google and Yahoo have been discussing a partnership under which Google would supply some text ads alongside Yahoo search results; both companies expressed satisfaction with a limited two-week test. However, an announcement of the partnership between the online rivals has been delayed more than once.
Google's top executives have said they'd like to offer Yahoo a helping hand in their travails to fend off Microsoft, then activist shareholder Carl Icahn, and now Microsoft again. And Brin went one step further, saying he'd give Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang refuge within Google if he's ousted from the Internet pioneer, according to press accounts.
"Jerry is very talented, and if he wants to work at Google, we'd be very excited to have him, but I don't think that's going to happen," Brin said, according to the BBC.
Microsoft attempted to acquire Yahoo but now is considering a more limited acquisition of only part of Yahoo, the company said.
I am glad that Google is spewing, it's great to see. Even if it is Microsoft, I am glad to see that someone finally has the gumption to make Google quiver.
There is nothing that says that Google should have a perpetual right to dictate to the rest of the Internet.