Google co-founder and multi-billionaire Sergey Brin has concerns about Microsoft’s unsolicited bid and proxy fight preparations to takeover Yahoo.
Though a Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up would still leave the combined company well behind Google’s share of the search engine market, the dramatic shift in ownership of the Internet’s most heavily trafficked portal sends tremors of terror through the Googleplex.
Look no farther than comments by Brin cited by CNN Money, from Google’s headquarters:
“The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies,” Brin told The Associated Press after the event. “And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that’s unnerving.”
Google’s top lawyer, David Drummond, made similar apocalyptic suggestions once the company got around to formally commenting on Microsoft’s unsolicited overture. “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?”
Oh snap, as the saying goes.
Terrifying as a Microsoft-dominated Internet might be, we have to admit to a dangerous fascination with how exactly Microsoft would accomplish this. Dropping all of Yahoo’s and MSN’s content into a subscription-based walled garden? Charging emailers outside Yahoo and MSN to get into the inboxes at the respective webmail sites?
Can’t see it, really. Microsoft had its bad past, and they were very, very bad, not to mention a competent judge away from being broken up as well. But it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to try any kind of power grab online as is being suggested.
