Google: Microsoft's Yahoo bid threatens openness

A Microsoft-Yahoo merger could threaten the openness on which the Internet is based, according to a Google executive.

Microsoft's US$44.6 billion "hostile" bid "raises troubling questions," said David Drummond, Google chief legal officer, in a blog post on Sunday.

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

"Could the acquisition of Yahoo allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offences -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet," he wrote.

Microsoft and Yahoo together have a large share of the e-mail and instant messaging accounts, as well as two of the most popular Web portals. Drummond wondered about the possibility that Microsoft could use its dominance in the PC software market to unfairly limit access to competitors' Web services.

Yahoo said on Saturday that it is evaluating the unsolicited bid.

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1. Google meet IBM Anonymous -- 04/02/08

   it would seem Google is now looking to follow IBM's lead. Compete through the courts, rather than based on the value of the products.
   Maybe Google should team up with IBM so they could share legal strategies

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   1. Correct, google Anonymous -- 04/02/08

      Google is correct.
      
      And anyway, i'd rather have Google over Microsoft any day of the week. I'd rather quality, over crap. Innovation over lock-in.Google supports Open Source Software, while Microsoft is actively trying to destoy it.
      
      I know which i'd rather have as the 'leader', and I know which one *should be* the 'leader'.

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   2. LOL DarkPhoenix -- 04/02/08

      "Compete through the courts, rather than based on the value of the products. "
      
      This is a rather funny statement considering the opposing company in question competes through illegal business practices and use of lock-in techniques to foist unwanted technologies on people.

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2. Firefox and NineMSN Geoff Mischa -- 04/02/08

   If NineMSN is anything to go by, if Microsoft acquires Yahoo, using Firefox to check mail will result in the browser hanging, and needing to be restarted.
   
   There's so much rubbish downloaded on NineMSN, some of it not compatible with Firefox, that Firefox hangs, and it is impossible to quit the page. Advising NineMSN does nothing, they seem too arrogant to reply let alone fix it.

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   1. Fireflops Lord Watchdog -- 09/02/08

      "There's so much rubbish downloaded on NineMSN, some of it not compatible with Firefox, that Firefox hangs, and it is impossible to quit the page. Advising NineMSN does nothing, they seem too arrogant to reply let alone fix it."
      
      Since when to webmasters have to submit to browser vendors? If Firefox wasn't such a loaf of a programme riddled with bugs and a perpetual memory leak then it may be able to handle what many sites have to offer. I'm not a 9MSN fanboy either, in fact I rarely visit the site but I am a webmaster and I wouldn't like to think that people having bad experiences with Firefox when every other browser works fine would be levelling the blame at me.
      
      The lucky devil that gets to manage 9MSN probably knows that his site is the most popular one in Australia with in the order of 6 - 7 million unique visits per month. When one is that popular I guess they can afford to, for better or worse, be a little big-headed about it.
      
      That doesn't alter the fact that on this occasion, 9MSN is right and you are wrong.

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3. Google worried about the competition Anonymous -- 05/02/08

   Google has grown fat and slow due to the lack of competition in the search space over the years, and this is a predictable response.
   
   Maybe a bit of competition will finally force Google to look more closely at their almost non existent click fraud detection "system" and maybe even try to fix it!
   
   Having said that, Microsoft is no paragon of virtue either. Obviously they have given up on developing their own search engine. But Yahoo's search capability is nowhere near as good as Google's!

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   1. Big fat Google Lord Watchdog -- 09/02/08

      "Google has grown fat and slow due to the lack of competition in the search space over the years, and this is a predictable response."
      
      I agree. I will add that they have for too long being dictating to webmasters and website owners about construction, content and search engine optimisation. This is not the role a search engine should involve themselves in. To an extent Yahoo has been far more impartial in these areas and I believe that this attitude is better for search engines and better for the Internet as a whole.
      
      "Having said that, Microsoft is no paragon of virtue either. Obviously they have given up on developing their own search engine."
      
      If you were the developer of Live then you would too, as would I. Live is 'see are ay pee' and the previous MSN Search wasn't much better. I know of a website, in fact a rather good website, that Live claim to not being banned and that their web crawler does visit, yet typing the name of the website or any keyword into Live yields no result. Naturally, Live has no solution for the problem and it is highly likely that many sites are victims of this 'bug'.
      
      "But Yahoo's search capability is nowhere near as good as Google's!"
      
      Yahoo and Google are different but neither is superior to the other. I use Yahoo7 at home and Sensis at work. There are some good reasons for this. I refuse to be dictated to by Google and they've grown far too big for their boots. Yahoo gives me results I can use, so there is no real reason not to like Yahoo. I suppose it comes down to individual expectations and the Google-Yahoo debate is no different to Holden-Ford in many ways.
      
      One thing Google does do better is refreshing their results though if Microsoft is that keen to acquire Yahoo for the purpose of defeating Google in search then they will be equally as keen to make sure their webcrawlers do a better job.
      
      That said, it is just as likely that Microsoft will allow Yahoo to remain a seperate business entity and just be there each year to collect the money Yahoo makes. Yahoo is a very strong brand and killing it off would probably be suicide for the company.

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