p2pnet news | Freedom:- Google is worried.

Dead worried.

It’s advertising dominance is wobbling in the face of the possibility Yahoo might be swallowed whole by Microsoft, the only game in town able to offer a serious threat,

Microsoft’s “hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions,” says David Drummond, senior VP, corporate development and chief legal officer in a hypocritical post on on the official Google blog, going on:

This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

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 offenses – to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first – and should come first – as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

Says Jack Schofield in Guardian Unlimited:

How far Google is open is another matter. It certainly exploits free open source software, but its “secret sauce” isn’t available. Its search algorithms and operations are entirely secret, and Google can delete your site from its index without consulting you or anybody else, and you have no real recourse.

Even if you have created your site specifically following Google’s rules — most sites are written for Google nowadays — it can delete or downgrade it, and it won’t tell you why. That’s real power.

Drummond also says:

While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

There’s nothing new in that, of course. Most big companies do exactly the same thing, and the IBM monopoly — the original Evil Empire — was a master at it. However, Mr Drummond doesn’t seem to have looked at what Google is doing. Seems to me it’s taking its monopoly market share in proprietary search and using it to leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets, including email, messaging, blogging, maps, photos, social networking etc etc.

Indeed, Google may even be stifling innovation because its huge market power makes it hard to compete, even if you have a better product. And because Google is hugely rich, it can buy up innovation by taking over other companies such as YouTube, Blogger, Keyhole, Picasa, DoubleClick, Feedburner, Jaiku, Jotspot, Android (to get into phones), Postini, GrandCentral and many more. If you can out-innovate Google, it can, like the borg, absorb you.

(Revised @ 7:01 am, Pacific)

Definitely stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Dead worried – Anti-Microsoft Google / Yahoo alliance?, February 4, 2008
Google blog – Yahoo! and the future of the Internet, February 3, 2008
Guardian Unlimited – Hello, Google, can you spell hypocrisy?, February 4, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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