Filed under: Deals, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) does not much like the fact that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is making a bid for internet portal firm Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). So the world’s largest search company has decided to start a PR campaign to get the government to kill the deal.
In a blog post, Google Senior Vice President David Drummond, asks whether Microsoft could “now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the World wide web that it did with the PC,” according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Microsoft immediately took the other side of the argument by saying that Google dominates the global search market. A buy of Yahoo! wouldn’t knock Google out of the No.1 spot.
The bickering over the matter probably makes little difference. Google is so powerful now in world wide web search that Microsoft might not make much progress there even by owning Yahoo!. There will be all sorts of integration problems if its bid goes through. Google probably will keep gaining search share in the meantime. The government knows all of that. There’s tiny reason for it to oppose the deal.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
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