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GIANT fun in Arizona last night, Super Tuesday tomorrow, and of course, Friday's announcements of a possible super big $44.6B hostile takeover of struggling Yahoo! by Microsoft. With it, not unexpectedly, comes the super cry of antitrust from Google, fearing, among other things, that "Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts." Yahoo!'s counter-concern is that blocking the deal "would undermine competition by allowing Google to become even more dominant than it already is on the Internet." Eric Goldman, director of the High-Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, likes Google's chances in the long antitrust review ahead: “Google can tap into all of the ill will that Microsoft has created in the last couple of decades on the antitrust front.” For the NY Times' Joe Nocera, this is no super deal: "Having failed to challenge Google where it matters most—in online advertising—it has been reduced to bulking up by buying Google’s nearest but still distant competitor. In many ways, the company has become exactly what Bill Gates used to fear the most—sluggish, bureaucratic, slow to respond to new forms of competition..." The battle lines are drawn, says Silicon Alley Insider. It's payback time, and Google "will make life as miserable as possible for Microsoft during this process." Just in time, now that football's over. |
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