Google Gets Involved In The Battle For Yahoo

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in News

February5th2008

After watching peacefully for a while what happened so far in what can be called already "the battle for Yahoo", Google gets into the game by making its first official statements regarding this whole thing. After hearing rumors even about Apple's involvement in this, despite the fact they are pure fiction, for now, it became clear to me that I must hear something about Google too, and it seems my wish just came true...

GooglevsMicrosoft

No matter how many articles and opinions are going to go for or against Yahoo's purchase by Microsoft, if Yahoo's board agrees, of course, when Google says that the deal may raise "troubling questions", that's a statement with a serious impact.

While I wouldn't go that far to say that Microsoft had a bad influence over the PC industry, it should be noted that David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, asked the following question: "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?" and, to be honest, I have no answer to that. In fact, nobody has one yet, but I don't know why do they bother, since even if Microsoft takes Yahoo under its wing, they are going to hold less than 30% of the market.

Well, the answer may be found in Microsoft's domination in the OS market, but since IE's market share is getting smaller with each day, I don't think buying Yahoo may be the solution to gain it back... and if they do it, Microsoft's image will have to suffer, because they may "take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services", as Drummond thinks.

At last, we should notice that Microsoft's answer doesn't give us practically any useful information, since Brad Smith, their top lawyer, says "Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals.", while the Redmond giant has a bunch of ongoing lawsuits against open-source software producers...