Google held its Zeitgeist Conference yesterday, and during that conference, CEO Eric Schmidt, and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin held a media roundtable at which they discussed a variety of Google’s recent endeavors. Among the topics of course, was the proposed Google-Yahoo! advertising deal, which is currently being scrutinized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
This has been well covered in the media recently, particularly since Schmidt announced that Google and Yahoo! would be going forward with the deal in October rather than wait for the DoJ’s investigation. Schmidt thinks that rival Microsoft is largely to blame for the amount of controversy the deal has attracted. “I am quite sure that Microsoft is helping everyone get upset about things,” he said.
Microsoft is no doubt bitter about the whole thing, particularly since its own buyout of Yahoo! fell through, but Microsoft can’t take all the blame itself. According to the LA Times, Schmidt acknowledged that Google didn’t do a good enough job of explaining the deal. This didn’t do much to pour water on the flames.
Schmidt also acknowledged that Google pretty much expected the situation they are in. “We anticipated these objections,” he said. “This is roughly where we expected to be.” He implied that Google is well aware of U.S. antitrust regulations, and said that the company is “playing by the rules.” He pointed out how both Google and Yahoo! had invested so much time into the deal, and that they had no intentions of delaying it any further.
Of course that could change if the DoJ finds something it doesn’t like. Then there’s the fact the World Association of Newspapers has called upon the European Commission and the Competition Bureau of Canada to block the deal as well.
Nobody told Schmidt the deal was going to be easy. Luckily for him, he never thought it would be.
